


Creatures Void of Form

by Metis



Category: Hannibal (TV), Hannibal Lecter Series - All Media Types
Genre: Chilton using questionable psychiatric treatment, F/M, Gaslighting, Hannibal Rising Spoilers, Hannigram - Freeform, M/M, Manipulative Hannibal, Memory Palace, Prison, The Hannigram starts at Chapter 10, incest ahoy, somehow it turned into a 25000 word behemoth, this started off as a prompt response, ye be warned
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2013-12-28
Updated: 2015-06-07
Packaged: 2018-01-06 10:12:57
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 15
Words: 44,580
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1105588
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Metis/pseuds/Metis
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>No one can see or hear her, only the beloved brother she is never far from. How strange is it that after all these years the only person who notices her is Will Graham.</p><p>So it turns into a three way game between a cannibal, a ghost, and a man who can see them for what they truly are.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

Prologue:

If you pluck out the heart

To find what makes it move

You'll halt the clock

That syncopates our love.

 

Sylvia Plath- Admonition

____________________

 

Later, the few people who knew of his sister would try to point to her death, that terrible day when he had to watch her blood stain the snow while her killers looked on with the eyes and mouths of ravenous wolves, and those people would say, “That was the moment.”

The way they strive so intently to furnish a reason for his nature is laughable.

Ironically, the only ones who come close to understanding him are silent. Will Graham, who _will_ not speak, and Mischa, who _cannot_ speak, but would rage and snarl at the idea of her life being reduced to a footnote by fools trying to explain the unexplainable and turn it into something that can be rationalized. Something ordinary.

Had they the ears to hear her, she would have told them that nothing about him was ever ordinary.

___________________

Chapter 1:

His mother goes through four agonizing days of contractions before she can bring him into the world, and when he finally makes his entrance it is neither with a bang or a whimper. On the contrary, Hannibal Lecter is remarkably –eerily—silent.

He never crawls; those around him watch with some unease as he progresses from sitting, to a staggering toddle, nor is there any of the common babbling that babies indulge in before they begin to communicate rudimentary words.

Instead, Hannibal keeps his silence for three years, and when he finally lets his words burst forth, they are far too articulate for a child of his age.

By this time, his parents have long grown accustomed to their strangely solemn son, and are even grateful for the boy’s quiet nature when they have their second child a short fourteen months after Hannibal’s birth. This new baby more than makes up for her brother’s silence.

When he is first presented with his baby sister the boy is hardly impressed, and he remains in a state of indifference to her until his mother teaches him how to read at four years old. By then, little Mischa’s wailing becomes a source of annoyance and distraction.

One morning, when he is bent over a leather bound copy of _Treatise on Light,_ a book that his father has managed to save from destruction by both the Lithuanian partisans and the Soviets who would have gladly taken all of the Lecter family books and used them for kindling, he hears her cry.

Although it is in the early in the morning –the blue-grey light coming in from the window in the kitchen is so faint that he can only _just_ make out the words on the pages- his father has already left the house. He works for the government officials that live and operate in the castle that had belonged to his family a generation ago.

Hannibal has just turned the page and started on a new chapter when the familiar sob carries through the house.

His mother, who always sleeps heavily during the pre-dawn hours, doesn’t stir.

Making his decision decisively, the boy gets up from his seat at the table and walks into the room he shares with Mischa. She quiets on his entry, stifling her cries and staring at him with wide blue eyes as he lowers the side of her crib.

Hannibal hefts her down from the crib, coaxing her to follow him.

Mischa complies slowly but willingly on unsteady legs.

Outside of their home (which used to be the gamekeeper’s cottage back when Lecter family owned the land) there is a sizable pond with a small rickety pier. Hannibal leads his sister to the end of the pier and when he deposits her there he turns back to walk in the direction he came from.

The boy has just reached the spot where the wooden planks meet the land when the ominous splashing of water that indicates that the large black swan inhabiting the lake has come to investigate the disturbance of its territory.

Hannibal knows the alpha swan has spotted Mischa when he hears it hiss out a challenge.

The girl makes a nervous sound.

A few more steps. His breath is escaping his lips in little white puffs when she speaks.

“Anniba!”

Hannibal turns around instinctively and when he does she sees his sister staring straight at him. There are tears soundlessly running down her cheeks as she tilts her head at him and says again- this time probingly- “ _Anniba?_ ”

Hannibal considers for a moment then gathers up the two largest broken branches he can find and walks back to the end of the pier; standing in front of Mischa, he holds out the sticks to shoulder height with both arms.

The advancing swan sees the boy’s superior wing-span and beats a hasty retreat.

Then throwing the broken branches into the water, Hannibal reaches out to hold his sister’s hand and steady her journey back into the house.

When they get inside (Mother is still asleep), he puts Mischa in his own bed and wraps her in an extra blanket to help warm her after their sojourn outside.

He stares at her inquisitively for some time before he picks up the _Treatise on Light_ and crawls into the bed with her so that they are lying on their backs, side-by-side, with the book propped against his bent knees.

Hannibal begins to read and Mischa never makes a sound.

As he reads to his sister, he silently acknowledges his mistake. He hadn’t realized that Mischa’s crying was an attempt to get his attention.

She has it now.

With the incident on the pond he has taught her that making meaningless noise is not an acceptable form regard, he forgives her for this behavior, and concedes his own error in not informing her of this sooner.

He wonders what else he can teach her.

Hannibal has always been a very curious boy, and for the first time in his life he’s curious about another person.

When he finishes the book, Mischa reaches up and places her hand on his cheek. Hannibal gives her a true smile in response, the expression is a little odd –it unnerved his mother the few times that she had witnessed it. But Mischa isn’t perturbed, she smiles back fearlessly.

When she grows older people will note the marked similarity that Mischa has to her brother when she smiles.

 

 


	2. Chapter 2

And here you come,

Wreathed in steam.

The blood jet is poetry,

There is no stopping it.

You hand me two children, two roses.

 

Sylvia Plath- Kindness

__________________________

  
  
Hannibal’s parents were rather shocked at their son’s sudden interest in the sister that he had spent two and a half years ignoring.

His mother in particular was astounded, not just at the sudden shift in notice, but at how well Mischa responded to it.

When the girl had graduated to solid food she had been a difficult child to feed- unlike her brother who contented himself with disdainful glares at their government rationed food, but ate without complaint- Mischa would vehemently rebel against the (admittedly poor quality) food she was provided with until her mother would give up in sheer exasperation.

Now, all her son would have to do was calmly sit next to his sister, uttering a few quiet words and within moments the little girl would be scraping the plate clean. He even managed to get her to eat after she had taken a tumble and split her lips- in spite of the terrible discomfort it gave her to chew. 

If Mischa had a nightmare, Hannibal needed only to tuck her under the covers with him in order to soothe her instantly.

The other women who live in the hastily erected dwellings that have cropped up around the castle often compliment her on the dedication that her son heaps on his sister- she rather thinks that what they really feel is relief that Hannibal is displaying something as normal as fraternal devotion.

She supposes she should feel the same, but of course these other women can’t see all the aspects of rapport that her children share.

For example, Hannibal had told his parents that he wished to begin teaching Mischa how to read. She and her husband hadn’t made any protests, but they were doubtful about how much success the boy would have, after all Mischa was barely three and she didn’t seem to have her brother’s innate grasp of things.

Hannibal had merely smiled in response, and they were proven wrong because Mischa had pushed herself to learn at a frightening pace.

She and her brother would sit outside or near the fireplace and Hannibal would take up a sharp stick and draw out words for her to read in the dirt or ashes.

One night after Simonetta had made dinner and was waiting for her husband to get home, she sat in on one of Hannibal’s impromptu lessons. Mischa was studying the word intently, chewing her lip in concentration. Seeing the visible anxiety of her daughter she had made to move closer to help, but before she could take a step Mischa spun around said in an almost vicious tone, “I can do it.”

Feeling nonplussed, she sat back down and watched as the young girl finally made out the word ‘edict’ and turned towards her brother with fierce triumph. Hannibal gave a proud nod in return and shooting a glance at his parent said calmly, “Very good Mischa. Now we need to get ready for dinner.”

“Just one more?”

“No. Not tonight.”

Mischa sighed and went outside to wash her hands at the pump while her mother stared after her with worried eyes.

There was nothing _exactly_ to reproach her son with. He never said anything to his sister that could be construed as pushing her…in fact she had never even heard Hannibal raise his voice to the girl. Not once.

All the same, she knew that Mischa _was_ pushing herself to please her brother.

Hannibal looked up at his mother and spoke with a relaxed air, “The person she wants to please most is herself.”

Simonetta jumped at the close line that her son had on her thinking and after a few moments shakily responded, “But she does want to please you too.”

“Yes.”

He sounded satisfied with the thought.

She wasn’t surprised when less than a year later, Hannibal began to quiz his sister on the principal parts of Latin verbs.

Perhaps the child had a natural bent towards the subject (or more likely, because it was the first mark of interest and approval that her sibling had shown toward her) Mischa would go through the rest of her life with a fixation on words- both written and spoken.

She didn’t understand it, not then, but eventually she comes to see that it’s a trait that her children have in common.

An obsessive concentration on the task at hand.

____________________

In spite of the misgivings that such moments inspired, there were other instances that made her think her fears were misplaced.

Mischa had come down with a fever once making both she and her husband frantic with worry. When the doctor had come around to check on their daughter (their home was some distance from the other dwellings), but in spite of this _wonderful_ new era of shared property and treatment that the new government preached, medications were hard for the average person to obtain.

There had once been talk about leaving their home country altogether, and trying to get to France and her husband’s brother who might help them reclaim some of their losses. Ultimately the venture was discarded as too risky. They had little money; if they tried to sell or barter the few hidden heirlooms they kept secreted away it would probably send up a host of red flags. Even if they managed to get the money, there was considerable danger trying to cross the border, anyone caught was either shot or thrown in a gulag.

As she had watched her daughter’s fevered eyes dart around the room wildly, she wonders if it wouldn’t have been worth the risk after all.

Hannibal had been beside himself. When her husband had tried to order their son from the room, to keep him from catching fever as well, the boy had snapped ( _actually snapped!)_ that he would do no such thing.

They had been so shocked that they had not dared to contradict his wishes.

Hannibal sat at his sister’s bedside, barely eating and not sleeping for three days.

When Mischa’s fever had finally broken, the girl had stared at her brother with returning comprehension and whispered to him that she had had a dream about monsters that tossed her into a burning field and tried to devour her.

“Go to sleep. They won’t get you.”

“You won’t leave?” she inquired nervously.

“No. I’ll protect you.”

Mischa settled into a deep and healthy slumber.

Their mother watched the exchange with silently. She saw in that moment that her son genuinely loved his sister and felt a relief which weighed against her doubts.

She never noticed that Hannibal’s hand was clenched around the young girl’s wrist so tightly that it left bruises…and she would never know that Hannibal _couldn’t_ love anyone without leaving marks.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> * Just in case anyone's wondering, Simonetta is the cannon name for Hannibal's mother. In the book Hannibal Rising she is descended from the Italian aristocracy- the Sforza family (and they're an interesting family...seriously go look up the wikipedia page on Caterina Sforza for one hell of an interesting read). Though, obviously, I had to change things a bit to make the timeline fit.


	3. Chapter 3

O, you who eat

People like light rays,

Leave this one mirror safe,

Unredeemed

 

Sylvia Plath- Brasilia

 

____________________

 

When Hannibal turns seven, he is old enough to attend the small school that has been established in the area. A few of the other students are brave - _stupid_ \- enough to attempt a physical confrontation.

Hannibal accepts their taunts and shoves placidly enough. At first.

Then when he leaves the school rooms (it would be rude to start an altercation within the classroom setting) he takes a leisurely pace back home, knowing that his so-called tormenters would want to catch up to him.

They do not fail to do so.

Sheep are always reliable in their predictability. 

That night one particularly self-important bully goes home with every one of his toes broken and tells his parents that it happened while he was playing a game. Nevertheless all the children at the school give Hannibal a wide berth afterwards.

He ignores them as he has always ignored most of the people around him.

However, his teacher, Mr. Jakov, takes an interest in the boy’s intelligence and offers Hannibal private lessons (lessons which due to the politically charged atmosphere of the times must not be spoken of).

Education under the Soviet government is a juxtaposition of frustration and liberation for educators such as himself. More children were literate in Eastern Europe than there ever had been before, but due to the communistic propaganda that was being enforced into Soviet education there were also marked gaps in learning. Areas such as genetics, philosophy, and certain branches of history were either slanted or completely left out.

Jakov, seeing potential in the quiet boy begins these private lessons with something called ‘The Method of Loci’.

“What does this method do?” Hannibal enquires. 

“It will help you remember everything.”

Hannibal tilts his head, “ _Everything_?”

“If you can construct the structure housing your memories to be big enough, then yes.”

Jakov outlines the method of storing memories and information in a structure created in one’s mind. Hannibal is fascinated and readily agrees to study the technique.

“Are you certain? Memory isn’t always a blessing.”

The boy, not fathoming a time when he would wish to forget, confirms his willingness.

The teacher smiles, “Excellent! We will start off with a single room. What shall you place inside it?”

“Mischa.” The boy responds without hesitation.

“Your sister?”

“Yes.”

Mr. Jakov raises an eyebrow, “In that case we had better make it a very spacious room. Full of light and secret catches.”

Hannibal is gratified at the suggestion and begins to lay out the foundations of his memory palace.

____________

He is late getting home and Mischa is waiting for him outside the front door, writing words in the dirt with a stick. He looks at her work “The grammar is correct but the word order is wrong.”

“How?”

“The direct object follows the verb, it doesn’t precede it- not in this case.”

Mischa scowls at her scrawls in the dust, “Why is English grammar so illogical?”

“Because it’s influenced by a large number of other languages. Besides, it isn’t really so difficult, you’re just conditioned  to the conservative nature of our own language, and Latin. You’ll have to start unlearning some of your precepts.” 

The girl sighs and rewrites her sentence hastily. Hannibal holds out his hand to help her stand while she asks him what he learned in his extra lesson today.

“I learned to build a structure to keep all my memories in.”

Mischa peers curiously at his hands and pockets.

“The structure is in my mind.”

“Oh…can I visit it?”

“You’re already there.”

The girl is delighted, “Can I make one too? Then you can have a place inside me.”

“I would like that.”

________________

With Hannibal away at school for most of the day, Mischa spends more time with her mother than she has since she was small.

Though the girl is impatient to start her own schooling (she wants so badly to learn and to have that learning improved on by her brother), she doesn’t mind spending time with her mother.

When Hannibal comes home, Mischa will tell him stories of how she spent her day. Sneaking into his bed at night she whispers to him about a pair of earrings that Mama has hidden and the way that their mother giggles as she showcases them for her daughter. Another time she tells him how Mama has taken a fancy to reading fairy tales from a book with woodcut pictures to her.

Hannibal asks her which one of the stories she likes the best.

“Snow White. Do you know that one?”

Hannibal, who has by this time read all the books in the house, nods.

“Do you think that if the Queen had really eaten Snow White’s lungs and liver-if the Huntsman hadn’t killed the pig instead- that it would have made her more beautiful?”

Hannibal almost laughs, “No. The only thing Snow White would have given the Queen is a full belly. It wouldn’t have made Snow White a part of her. Snow White would have been eaten and digested like all food.”

“But the Queen _thought_ it would,” she replies quietly.

“Foolish.”

Mischa frowns, “It’s strange though. The Queen spent so much time hating someone, and then she took pleasure when she thought that she had made that same person a part of herself.”

“Mr. Jakov told me of a doctor who writes about desires. This doctor thinks that on the other side of repulsion is attraction.”

“What was the doctor’s name?” the girl inquired.

“Dr. Freud. But Mr. Jakov wouldn’t say much more about him. He said some of his writings were lewd.” Hannibal replies.

“What’s lewd?”

“Things you shouldn’t say in front of mother.”

The girl looks at her brother inquisitively “So we love and hate at the same time…is that what the poem is talking about?”

“Which poem?” he asks curiously.

“ _Odi et Amo_.”

“Where did you read Catullus?”

“It was in Papa’s book collection,” she whispers guiltily, “I made sure to put it back right where I found it.”

“Mother would not be pleased to know you’ve read those poems, Mischa”

“Because they’re lewd?”

“Precisely.”

The little girl gives him a rebellious grin, “I think they’re pretty. Anyway, _Odi et Amo_ isn’t lewd and you never answered my question.”

“You never finished telling me the poem, and I know that you’re dying to show off your translation.”

She giggles, not bothering to deny it, “ _Odi et amo, quare id faciam, fortasse requiris? nescio, sed fieri sentio et excrucior_.”

“And the translation?”

“I hate and I love. Perhaps you’re asking why I do that? I don’t know, but I feel it happening and I’m tortured.”

Though he has already read the poem, Hannibal listens with interest, “’Tormented’ fits better in the context.”

“How can you hate someone that you love?” she murmurs with a puzzled expression.

“People can be cruel to one another, particularly to the people that they love.”

“Maybe…” she’s speaking more to herself than to him.

He questions her gently, “Maybe, what?” 

Her face is troubled, “Maybe it’s the _way_ he loves her that Catullus hates so much.”

“An interesting idea. What makes you think that?”

“No reason,” the response is uncharacteristically taut and she turns around to bury her face in the pillow.

“Mischa?”

She, with her face muffled, asks, “If you ate me would I always be a part of you?”

He knows she’s asking the question to divert the topic, but Hannibal feels a sudden rush of flesh crawl up his back at the thought and his lips form an answer before he realizes it. “No.”

Mischa gives a sharp hiss and he realizes that he has gripped her hand so tightly that her fingers are going white.

He doesn’t let go, only grips tighter and repeats, “No.”


	4. Chapter 4

Fractured pillars frame prospects of rock;

While you stand heroic in coat and tie, I sit

Composed in Grecian tunic and psyche-knot,

Rooted to your black look, the play turned tragic:

Which such blight wrought on our bankrupt estate,

What ceremony of words can patch the havoc?

 

Sylvia Plath- Conversation Among the Ruins

_______________

 

 

One night father comes home and he is angry. He’s had an argument with one of the officials that he works for.

Mother is worried, though she never says so to either her children or her husband. Their position is tenuous; they may live under a government that preaches equality, but the old grudges against the aristocracy have hardly been forgotten in the years since the nobility had been abolished.

Hannibal can scent the danger in the air; the fear tastes hot and fevered.

The next time he has a private lesson with Mr. Jakov, he asks if the teacher has any books on anatomy that he may borrow.

“I have a book that contains a section on anatomy. What do you need it for?”

“I want to be a doctor.”

“Very well, then. I’ll bring it tomorrow, but you’ll need to be careful not to let anyone see that you have it.”

Hannibal is grave, “I promise.”

When he receives the book, he spends days pouring over it. Committing it to memory. When it has been properly stored in his mind, he prepares to pass the knowledge on.

He wakes Mischa up one day in the early morning hours. Whispering to her softly, “I want you to look at the drawings in this book. It’s very important that you remember everything that I tell you.”

That’s all he needs to say.

Hannibal knows it to be one of her best qualities; the way she can channel her focus into something until she masters it. His parents may be correct in the supposition that his sister doesn’t possess the inherent ability of comprehension that he does, but her _will_ to understand is something that strikes him with respect. All Mischa needs is direction, something he finds that he is eager to supply.

______________________

When he informs Mr. Jakov that he will have to miss school for the next few weeks, the teacher is hardly surprised. The resentment that the boy’s father has towards those in authority is quickly becoming the grist for gossip in the community.

Lecter’s resentments aren’t without cause; the assortment of power in the Communist government is grossly disproportionate, and the local governor elect _is_ particularly corrupt. Still, Jakov knows that the man is playing with fire (even if Brezhnev’s government may not be the horror that was Stalin’s, it is still not one to cross) and even worse, he is throwing the lives of his family into the blaze as well.

So perhaps it’s better for everyone involved if people forget about the Lecter’s for a while, though Jakov is saddened that he will no longer be able to have lively discussions with Hannibal.

Before he leaves him he grips the boy shoulder intently, “Hannibal, if something should happen. Or if you think something is going to happen. Don’t concern yourself with anything but running and hiding. Soldiers may not have any qualms with firing bullets in whatever direction they are told, but if the soldiers don’t get a hold of you then you’ll be left in the hands of officials who are more likely to spare you, they don’t like dirtying their hands.”

The boy tilts his head to the side and says emphatically, “I know.”

Hannibal’s mother doesn’t argue with his choice to abstain from school.  Indeed, she is relieved to have both of her children nearer to her during the long hours of the day.

They take this time to study the woods and wild places near their home. Hand in hand they walk together and he questions her over and over.

“How many bones does the average adult have in their body?”

“206.”

“And their types?”

“Long, short, flat, and irregular,” Mischa hesitates, “Why do I need to know this?...I mean, why is it so important now?”

“You miss your other lessons?”

She shrugs, “I do, but mostly I just want to know why you and Mama are so scared.”

“Scared?”

“Mama is scared. And you’re ….tense.”

He reaches into his pocket and pulls out a knife. Mischa recognizes it as one of her fathers, one that she knows to be long, thin, and sharp. He places the folded blade in her hand and tells her directly, “Things are changing, we may not always be safe, you need to decide if you want to be helpless or not.”

Mischa stares at the metal resting in her hand, Hannibal can read the apprehension in her face. Slowly, she raises her eyes to meet his and lets her fingers close around the metal.

He lets himself smile and continues, “We’re learning bone structure so that we can avoid it. It’s soft tissue that we’re concerned with.”

Hannibal knows that his sister looks at the necessity of the knife as something unreal, though she takes the information seriously enough, he’s aware that her mind can’t quite conceive of turning thought into deed.

He leans forward and drops a kiss on her head, using the movement to breathe in the scent of her fear; it tastes like a wash of copper on his tongue.

______________________

He is on his way to return the book that Mr. Jakov loaned to him when the sound of motors alerts Hannibal to the coming danger.

He throws the book to the ground regretfully- the action is disrespectful- and propels himself back in the direction that he came from. Though the motor cars are much faster than his legs could ever be, he has the advantage of being able to dart through forest and underbrush in a way that they can’t.

He knows that his shortcut will only gain him five minutes at the most.

It’s not enough time to save everyone.

Hannibal _cares_ for his mother and father; he doesn’t wish to see them die. But as he told Mischa weeks before: a choice has to be made. What he already knows –has always known - as his sister has discovered with the knife, is that his nature (and hers) actually leaves little to choose.

He would never be able to convince his parents of the incoming threat in time.

So as his legs carry him to his home, he is relieved to see Mischa sitting outside waiting for him in her customary spot. She gives a startled yelp when he takes her hand in a firm grip and tows her into the forest. Mischa gasps out, “What’s happening?”

He doesn’t get the chance to respond because the sound of the approaching motors still has stilled.

With an extra burst of speed they make it to a patch of tall grass which he had made note of two weeks before.

The siblings wade into it, and upon reaching its center, Hannibal pulls his sister to the ground with him. She lies on her side with her cheek pressed into the blades and his arms wrapped around her from behind.  His right hand is covering her mouth and he whispers softly in her ear, “Soldiers.”

Her eyes widen and he removes his hand, “But what about Mama and Papa?”

“There wasn’t enough time.”

She bites her lip hard, “Maybe they’ll let them go…maybe they only want to talk to them.”

He whispers back, “Maybe.”

He doesn’t believe it.

Shouts echo from the direction of the house. Mischa’s heart is beating as fast as a rabbit and her breaths are rapid and shallow. He can feel her panic reverberate in him.

Hannibal makes sure to keep his voice low and soothing, “Mischa. Look at me.”

She turns her head mechanically.

“I want you to conjugate a word for me,” It’s a game that they play between them when they start to learn a new language. He understands that she finds comfort in the rules and structure of such devices. Right now she needs the stability of that comfort.

“What?” She’s still panting dazedly, not really comprehending what he’s saying to her.

“ _Mischa,”_ He throws a bit of steel into his tone and she responds to it, forcing her thoughts to collect.

With more confidence he repeats, “Word conjugation.”

“I….What language?”

“Latin.” Hannibal knows that it’s her favorite.

Slowly Mischa comes back to herself, “Word and form?”

“Present Passive Tense. You can choose the word.”

She pauses to think, “Amo, Amare- to love.”

He nods his head encouragingly, “Go on.”

“Amor, Amaris, Amatur.”

They hear a scream.

Mischa pulls his arms tighter around her but continues, “Amamur, Amamini, Amantur.”

The sound of bullets being fired.

She’s weeping openly now, in a way she hasn’t wept since that morning by the lake five years ago. He lets her.

They stay that way for hours until the cold of the night and the rustle of nocturnal animals force them to make their way back.

Hannibal goes first. When he reaches the clearing there aren’t any cars in sight, he silently motions for Mischa to follow.

Mother and Father are lying on the ground just a few scant feet from the front door. The bullet wounds in their bodies have long since stopped bleeding. The sight hurts more than he thought it would.

Mischa can't bring herself to look, not now. Instead she presses her face into her brother’s shoulder as he guides them inside and shuts the door. Their home has been ransacked, everything of value is gone, though she can't muster up much care about it at the moment. There are things that she should be feeling. Grief? Loss? But they seem distant and far removed. The only thing that she discerns is a numbing cold that seeps into her bones. 

As Hannibal piles every blanket he can find on top of them, she says nothing, only burrows close to him and eventually falls into an exhausted sleep. 

Outside the wolves are howling.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> * So I realized after I published the last chapter that I should have made a note about Hannibal's memory palace. I'm sure most of you probably know this already, but just in case anyone's curious, the the idea of Hannibal having a memory palace is taken directly from the Thomas Harris books. The technique is called "The Method of Loci" and from what I understand, is one of the oldest memory retention methods practiced. Both the Greeks and the Romans wrote about it (really fascinating stuff!).


	5. Chapter 5

Atop the broken universal clock:

The hour is crowed in lunatic thirteens.

Our painted stages fall apart by scenes

While all the actors halt in mortal shock.

 

Sylvia Plath- Doomsday

 

____________________

When Hannibal wakes, Mischa is gone.

He sits up quickly and casts aside the blankets. He looks first in their parents’ room, and upon finding nothing he moves to the room he shares with Mischa where spots her from the window; she’s standing outside, with the bodies that are still lying on the frozen ground.

Quietly, he makes his way outside to join her. 

The animals have been here, Hannibal can spot the distinctive bites from foxes and wolves, but Mischa isn’t bothered.

Her voice is like obsidian , sharp and fragile, “She’s not Mama anymore.”

“No,” he agrees.

“You were right.”

“About what?”

“Snow White,” she replies, “the Queen wanted the body left for the animals. She wasn’t stealing Snow White’s loveliness, she was showing her contempt, reducing all that beauty to meat.”

“The Queen was a stupid woman. Not worthy of her life or her beauty. Snow White knew it too, that’s why she killed her step-mother in the end.”

“I wonder if Snow White ate her.”

“Fitting,” He whispers then reaches out and wipes a few stray tear tracks from her face with his hand. He knows she’ll never cry again.

She catches his palm with her own, pressing it to her cheek, "Never leave me," he understands that she does not mean it in a physical sense.

"Never," he answers.

She only repeats, as if in desperation, yet her voice is so calm, "Never leave me..."

It chills him because her desperation matches his own. She reads his feelings in his face.

Mischa laces their fingers together and they walk towards the town.

 ____________________

It doesn’t take long for the children to be spotted, and by the time Governor Elect Petrauskas is informed, a considerable amount of the community has come to see the commotion.

Hannibal wills himself to cry. Not loud bawling. Not sniveling and begging. Just a slow course of water from his eyes. There is a streak of moisture on the pads of his fingers, left from the last of Mischa's sorrow, which he is strangely aware of as he tells the tale of how he was playing in the forest with his sister when they heard the sound of gunfire. How they had been too frightened to approach their home and instead had spent the night hiding in the forest.

Men go out to investigate. When they come back grave-faced, they speak to Petrauskas first, who converses together with them for several minutes.

When Petrauskas finally deigns to speak with the children, his wife is with him and his manner is solemn, “Young man, you must be strong for your sister, I have to tell you both a hard thing.”

Madame Petrauskas slides her hands in comforting motions along their backs as he continues, “Your parents are dead, and we think they were killed by Partisans. I am sorry for your loss.”

Mischa throws herself at Hannibal and buries her face in his neck, not to sob, but to avoid giving herself away by the look of disdain on her face.

The Governor's wife is wearing their mother’s earrings.

Mischa silently notes that they brush the woman’s shoulders in a way that they never did on their mother. Mama had a longer neck.

Hannibal lets a few more false tears fall and grips his sister closer to him. He scents blood in the air and upon glancing down sees that Mischa has dug her fingernails into her small palms.

________________

The Governor Elect makes a great public show of sympathy for the children, he announces that he must regretfully send them to an orphanage because they have no living family left to care for them.

He even lets them spend the interim time –as arrangements are made for their transfer– in his own home. The castle that had once belonged to the Lecter family.

No one in the town is fooled.

The children are respectful, though Mischa has retreated behind a baracade of silence.

One night, Petrauskas invites Hannibal to take a walk around the old castle. He guides him though the rooms that have been gutted for the more practical uses of government and then leads him outside.

Once there he shows the boy a large pit covered with an iron grate, “Do you know what this is?”

“An oubliette?”

Petrauskas pulls back the grate with a grunt, “Correct, you’re a clever young man.”

Hannibal looks down the dark hole with morbid fascination unable to see the bottom. He can feel that same preternatural creeping of flesh that he had only felt once before; when Mischa had asked about the Snow White fairytale.

_“If you ate me would I always be a part of you?”_

The Governors words interrupt the boy’s thoughts, “Your ancestors built this to dispose of people they were threatened by.”

The boy takes a curious step closer, “From the Latin, oblivio- to forget.”

“Just so,” says Petrauskas, “the people thrown in were forgotten. Where did you learn Latin?”

“From my father.”

“Yes, a shame about him,” the man kicks some dirt into the blackness, and there is no sound of impact, “…are you certain you didn’t see anything that night?”

“Quite certain.”

Petrauskas nods and approvingly repeats, “Clever young man.”

The children are shipped off to the Constantin Virnav Orphanage the next day.

_______________________________

 

To its credit, the Soviet Union has abolished much of the previous bias against orphans that had pervaded in Eastern Europe until the end of the Second World War, ending the long social stigma surrounding the children, portraying them as victims rather than subversives.

Unfortunately, public sympathy doesn’t equate to full bellies. The Government’s heavy debts have left little in the way of relief for all public programs, and years of civil strife provide an overabundance of parentless children.

When Hannibal and Mischa reach the orphanage, there is general resentment (as there is to all new coming children) because now there will be even less of their meager allotment food to divide amongst themselves and less space on the already over-crowded beds.

Neither child speaks as the Matron tells them the rules of the house.  When she finishes her speech she directs the children to play outdoors until dinner.

Once outside, the oldest children approach ready to forcibly take whatever meager belongings the newcomers may have. The leader of this band of bullies is a boy called Petras, who elects to ignore Mischa (her wide blue eyes give her a non-threatening appearance) with a sharp push that makes her stumble behind him.

Hannibal barely even blinks as the bigger boy shouts threats. 

Petras grabs onto Hannibal’s shirt so intent on his intimidation that it takes him a moment to realize that there is blood on Lecter’s shirt.

Another moment to realize that the blood is his own.

 He lets out a shriek and pulls away with Mischa’s knife sticking out of his hand.

For the first time since his parents died, Hannibal smiles. Really smiles.

He’s proud of Mischa’s accomplishment. She has hit the Distal row avoiding both the capitate and hamate bones. She applied a bit too much pressure but this is understandable given that it is her first attempt.

She’ll improve now that she has cleared the biggest hurdle, and she has fully grasped the necessity of the knife.

Hannibal walks over to Petras and knocks him to the ground with a swift blow to the kidney. As the boy lays gasping like a fish on the ground he places his foot on his wrist and pulls the knife from the hand it’s still imbedded in.

He wipes the knife clean on Petras’ clothes and gives it back to Mischa.

Then he goes back and systematically snaps the proximal, middle, and distal bones. By the end, Petras is unconscious.

Mischa looks down at his work. The strange angles that the hand now twists into are peculiarly lovely.

Her brother looks at her intently. 

She is disturbed, and grimly fascinated; like a bird caught in the gaze of snake, she can’t turn away from the sight.

______________

The passing years do nothing to detract from that captivation.

_______________

Though he isn’t one to indulge in cursing; the opportune moment to start would seem to be now.

Things hadn’t proceeded quite the way he had conceived that they would (the way that they always have); this is to be expected, he knows how averages work. When a system is repeated long enough, eventually a surprising event will occur.

And he must give credit where it is due; the young man has fought harder to cling to his life than Hannibal had estimated.

Matas aged out of Constantin that day and the temptation had proved too much to resist. The older boy had collected his few meager possessions and after some choice (crude) words to several girls in the orphanage had started on his way towards the main road to try and find his way into town.

Hannibal had lain in wait for him. Picking the perfect area, densely wooded and secluded, having enough distance from both the road and Constantin to ensure privacy.

Which accounts for his current predicament.

Now the large knife Hannibal had stolen from the kitchens is hovering precariously over his own face as the two boys strain for control.  Blood dripped down from Matas face in rivulets that stung Hannibal’s eyes. 

Hannibal may only be thirteen but he is deceptively strong. He is well matched to his opponent in spite of a five year age difference, though Matas has the advantage of several inches in height as well as the added vigor that a legitimate threat to his life has generated. 

The blade descends another inch and nicks his forehead before he can force it back again.

Suddenly Matas lets out a rush of breath and the knife hits the ground harmlessly as he falls.

Mischa stands above him with a large rock clutched in her hand, arm still slightly raised, as if she’s afraid the still figure might get up.

Hannibal reaches over to check the other boy’s pulse and finds it thready. Still alive then. Good.

He stands and takes the stone out of his sister’s hand which shakes her out of her stupor. She looks between Matas and himself for a long time, he thinks that she is as startled as he is at what she has done, then as quietly as she had approached, she leaves. 

He knows that she won’t go far.

__________________

Mischa walks until she can’t see anything but trees.

She knows it’s cowardly to not watch what she has just condoned with her own actions. What she has been passively ignoring for some time now. Nevertheless, her feet continue to march away with a steady rhythm.

When she finally gets far enough away to regain something that resembles composure, she sits with her back against a large tree trunk.

She tells herself the rational things. That she’d never liked Matas who was rude and talked like a sailor. That nearly everyone who had ever come into contact with him had felt the same. That he would have likely ended up dead in a bar fight or some such when he let his hands wander over someone with a jealous husband or brother.

Still, when she hears a wail like the scream of a wounded animal tear though the quiet sounds of the forest, she flinches. Just a little.

After an indeterminate amount of time, Hannibal sits down next to her, only a fleck or two of stained clothing and the small scratch on his forehead offer any indication that her brother has done more than take a long walk.

“How long have you known?”

“Always.”

“Since the first time I…”

“Since forever,” she gently interrupts, “even before the morning by the pond. It was always in you.”

“Interesting.”

She blinks, “You didn’t know that I knew?”

“I was unaware just how conscious you were of my…proclivities.”

Mischa she can’t keep the glee out of her voice, even as she knows that it’s vastly inappropriate for situation, she sing-songs, “ _You_ _didn’t know_!”

He ignores her mirth with a slight purse of his lips (the closest to pouting that he ever gets) and presses on, “How does it make you feel, knowing what you do?”

She shrugs, momentary levity forgotten.  

“Don’t be glib.”

Mischa inhales deeply and tries to conceptualize the dark tangle of her thoughts. It’s almost laughable how words fall short, especially to someone like herself who finds such comfort in the complexities of language, “There are some things that we’re just born with, they can’t be helped any more than we can help the color of our eyes.”

Hannibal takes her hand idly, “It doesn’t upset you?”

“There’s no point in being angry at you for being yourself,” she comments, “you do what it is in your nature to do. Being upset with you for your differentness would be like getting indignant with a swan for being beautiful. Rather futile.”

Taking note of the deliberate use of the swan in her metaphor and unable to disguise his interest, he traces his thumb along the lines in her palm and states, “You didn’t answer my question.”

“Just because it’s simple doesn’t make it easy. That is the answer.”

“You’re afraid.”

She i _s_ afraid. What before had only been a dim apprehension that she could push into a dark corner of her mind is now brazenly obvious – the knowledge of all that he might have it in his power to make her feel.

“Yes,” Mischa sighs, “but not in the way you think.”

Because she knows herself well enough to understand that she would give herself to pain with passionate alacrity and the singleness of vision that is in their shared makeup.  Except, what is a blessing to his nature, will be a curse to her own. She knows it with certainty.

He raises an inquisitive brow, “I’m curious what tendencies you see so inborn in yourself that you can empathize with my own.”

“Nothing I can share,” Mischa gives him a pained smile and looks away, pressing a light kiss to his fingers before drawing back her hand.

For a moment she sees in his expression a ripple of emotion spilling out from behind the mask. Even if the spark of feeling has been deliberately extracted for her benefit it doesn’t detract from its sincerity. It coils around her painfully and coaxes her to unburden herself.

Which is, naturally, what he intended.  

And she loves it even as it wounds her.

Perhaps that’s the real tragedy of their makeup; that neither of them know how to love without hurting. In one way or the other.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I hope that the time jump wasn't too abrupt for anyone but I did want to move things along a bit. 
> 
> Also, if anyone is curious about the oubliette and it's significance, all I can say is that hopefully things will start to make sense in a few chapters.


	6. Chapter 6

I think I am going up,

I think I may rise ---

The beads of hot metal fly, and I, love, I

Am a pure acetylene virgin

Attended by roses.

 

Sylvia Plath- Fever 103

______________________

_“I won’t!”_

“You will,” Hannibal replies with steady calm and authority.

“Absolutely not.”  

The sky above them is grey and the air is frigid. It has stripped the leaves from the trees which now cover the ground and snap under their feet. This will be the sixth winter that they’ve spent in Constantin Virnav. Six years of cold, hunger, and monotony. If she didn’t have her brother with her to help her endure, she would have died here long ago.

She fingers her father’s knife in her pocket.

_I probably wouldn’t have lived long enough to get to the orphanage._

Her memory will never be quite as exact as her brother’s, particularly before he began helping her to construct her memory palace, though she has no trouble remembering the morning by the lake. It’s as clear to her as the sight of the bodies that used to be her mother and father, half frozen to the ground outside their home.

She can’t remember a time when she wasn’t fascinated by Hannibal, even during the first few years of her life when he had paid no more mind to her than the ground beneath his feet, she had always been immersed in him. There was a _differentness_ about him, something that set him apart from Mama, Papa, and everyone around them. Their mother had seen glimmers of it, and though she would never admit it, she had sometimes been scared by it. 

Mischa herself had been captivated, the differentness made him beautiful. She’d never thought to be scared, not until the morning at the lake, when Hannibal had left her by the edge of the dock and the swan had charged up to knock her into the water where she likely would have drowned.

Even at that moment, while she had been scared, she hadn’t been angry or even resentful. Rather, she’d been sad. She thought that her brother must have been terribly lonely in his singular nature and she had sobbed at the thought that she wouldn’t be able to let him know how much she loved him in his dissimilarity. Because when she had felt her own bouts of strangeness, when she felt… _things_ that she innately knew that she shouldn’t feel (even back then), it had comforted her to know that she wasn’t alone.

Mischa’s life might have ended right at that moment.

Instead, Hannibal had looked back at her and somehow he had understood her, perhaps for the first time he had considered that someone else might be worth some interest.

She knows that he didn’t love her right from that moment, there never had been an exact moment, rather it had been a slow realization.

But she knows for certain that he loves her now.

_“Does he now?”_  

She quickly buries the thought and focuses on their argument.

The food allotment had been reduced-yet again. She had eaten yesterday, Hannibal had not. Now he was trying to coax her into eating his own portion (a hunk of bread) today. Hence the quarrel.

“I won’t let you starve yourself for me.”

“I’m hardly about to starve.”

“Neither am I,” Their voices are echoing around the forest that surrounds them, and she is grateful that they decided to take their fight outside where none of the children can see.

The other inmates of the orphanage mind to keep their distance from the Lecter siblings- the story of what happened to Petras is always one of the first told to newcomers. Though those who have been in the institution long enough to remember suffering under Petras’ cruelty never fail to be amused at the way the former bully scampers like a mouse at the sight of either of them.

Though they have grown more amicable with the other children as the years have passed, most keep a healthy distance, no one is eager to venture after the pair.

Mischa reads his features to discern his thoughts. Thanks to their father’s genes, he is close to 1.80 meters and a general lack of food has erased any childhood plumpness that may have otherwise been present. The end result is that Hannibal looks older than his actual fifteen years; his face is all angles overshadowed by prominent cheekbones.

But it’s his eyes that she is interested in now, she deciphers his intent in the tightness at the corners and a slight twitch in his lower lip.

Mischa makes a quick dodge just as her brother makes his move. Before she can retreat, he quickly compensates his approach and with a shove she falls on her backside. In a split second, Hannibal has her pinned beneath him with one leg on each side of her body and his knees keeping her hands pressed flat on the dead leaves of the forest floor.

When she realizes that she won’t be able to throw him off  (not with her hands pinned) she turns her head to the side and clenches her jaw tightly, silently letting him know that she is quite willing to wait here all day before she gives in and eats the bread still clenched in his right hand.

He sounds tired as queries, “Must you be such a child about this?”

Mischa’s answer is to settle in more deeply. She’s already preparing the adjectives she wants to decline in her mind.

Her head is positioned at such an angle that she can see the thumb and forefinger on his left hand knead together…one of his few tells.  

She hears him sigh, “Very well.”

Out of the corner of her eye she watches him place the bread in his own mouth.

Mischa exhales in relief and relaxes her tense muscles.

In retrospect, she should have realized that he never would have given up that easy.

Hannibal strikes with the speed of a snake. She only has time to give a squeak of protest before his mouth is sealed over her own. He slips the food to her with a soft working of his jaw, unable to resist nicking her with his teeth before he replaces his lips with his hand to prevent her from not swallowing in an act of sheer obstinacy.

When Mischa can bring her thoughts into some coherency (it takes much longer than she wants to admit), she briefly considers biting his fingers, then she decides against it- her brother wouldn’t hesitate to bite her back. She settles for glaring at him as she swallows. She’s blushing so badly that she can feel it in her face which only makes her blush deepen because she knows how blotchy it makes her look.

Hannibal is amused at her distress and with his goal accomplished; he leans back slightly to free her hands. He doesn’t make any attempt to move off of her.

Mischa can only stare at him with a mix of ire and tenderness. Exasperated both with him and with her conflicting emotions, she reaches up and pulls him down until his forehead touches her own. Closing her eyes she quietly whispers, “You can’t keep doing this.”

“I can for a while.”

She opens her eyes, he’s only millimeters away from her, “No, you can’t.”

He reaches out and combs some of the dead leaves from her hair, feeling tiny static shocks hit his fingers as he moves them, “Illness is lingering here.”

“No one has reported anything.”

“Everyone is malnourished or anemic. Their bodies are weakened and vulnerable; sickness is perched here like a predator waiting for the opportune moment… I can taste it.”

His mouth comes next to her ear and slowly travels down to the crook in her neck. Inhaling the heat and the nervousness that she’s exuding. “I can smell it on you.”

Mischa feels her breathing speed up. He’s so close to her that it’s overwhelming, and she dazedly thinks that she can’t remember a time when she hasn't been swallowed up by the sheer force of his presence. He has sculpted the way that she thinks, chiseled her emotions, and carved her nature.

Is it wrong that she is pleased with the thought?

Finally she fires out a question to fill the quiet, “What about you? You think illness will just skip you over?”

Hannibal doesn’t answer.

His silence forces steel into her spine and she brings her hands up to flip their positions so that she’s crouched over him with her hands splayed out on his chest. She’s filled with more anger than she can ever remember feeling, and she’s glad of it. Anger is clean and sweeps everything else away.

“You promised you would never leave me. Do you think that death isn’t abandonment?”

She is so agitated that she doesn’t heed her bleeding lip, the lip he grazed during their tussle. A small stream of blood trickles down unnoticed to her chin.

In the distance, Matron rings the bell signaling that they only have a short amount of time left before they must go back inside.

Mischa turns her head in the direction of the orphanage but Hannibal remains fixated on the smear of red.

He speaks softly to regain her attention, “Perhaps you are right.”

She peers at him suspiciously, “You haven’t admitted you were wrong since you were five.”

“I didn’t say that I was wrong, only that you are right.”         

“Of course,” she says not bothering to suppress her amusement.

He smiles to let her know he’s enjoying the banter, “Shall we strike a compromise?”

“What’s the compromise?

“When you truly need sustenance you will let me know. I will do the same.”

She’s pleased, “Agreed.”

____________________

Her defenses are down now. He’s had to choose his moment carefully taking her full circle from affection to anger and back again; Mischa is very adept at pushing what feelings she deems insupportable to a place in her mind where they can lay hidden from him.

For years now they have found that his memory palace and her own share rooms - he can almost freely traverse them. Almost.

He is not surprised that they have merged; it is, after all, what he has been working towards with her.

But there are still some places that she will not allow him to see. He finds this intolerable.

Not that he doesn’t have a good idea what exists behind the locked doors in her mind. He even understands why she guards them so fiercely. She is deeply afraid that if he should discover her feelings that the knowledge of them would kill his love for her.

‘Odi et amo’ indeed.

The fear is permissible, but the barrier it pushes between them is not. It’s holding her back from all that she is capable of becoming.

Since their childhood, when he first discovered that Mischa also possessed in some degree what she has labeled ‘differentness’, he has been operating on her. Silently opening his body, he has taken the shadows in himself and grafted them to the ones that already exist within her. His parents may have birthed her, but he is the one that has breathed _life_ into her. Like Galatea.

Hannibal raises himself so that Mischa is sitting in his lap.

She blanches and he follows her thoughts and feelings which are laid out to him like a map. Each one is individually cataloged and stored in his mind.

Yes, he is certain now.

“What are…?”

He has to do this carefully, unraveling both her physical and mental resistances, so that she can take the last step. He may provoke and prod, but she ultimately has to be the one to rip down her barricades and let him in.

He leans forward slowly, giving her ample time to pull away. She doesn’t. 

Then he uses his thumb to trace up the path of blood on her lips and pops the digit in his mouth. “Do you feel trapped, Mischa?”

She gulps, “By what?”

“By me. By the promise that I made to you.”

“Of course not.”

He tilts his head, “You are hiding things from me. Do you think I haven’t noticed there are places you won’t let me see?”

“I…I can’t, please! It’s nothing important.”

He reaches up and caresses her cheek, “Do you really think that your feelings are unimportant to me?”

“No.”

“Do you want me to feel what you feel?”

Mischa gasps, “ _Yes!_ …I mean, no. I don’t know.”

“What do you know?” he asks with a raised brow.

“That it’s only with you that I can be myself,” She whispers the confession raggedly. She doesn’t mention that her self-image and her perception of her brother are almost merged in her mind. Doesn’t mention that she finds solace in the idea, she doesn’t need to. In the conjoined rooms in their minds he can see her safeguards failing.

“Then let me in.”

He leans in even closer and kisses her. Chastely, something that could easily be explained as a token of innocent affection.

She makes a distressed sound and leans her head into his shoulder, “I’m disgusting.”

“No,” he strokes her head, “It’s true that you can be yourself with me. I see you, I see your wants, as you have seen mine. Nothing about you repulses me.”

She pulls back and ducks her head, “You want me to go hunting with you next time, don’t you?”

He keeps his voice soothing, “Do you think that I would manipulate your feelings like that?”

“Absolutely,” she murmurs before she kisses him again, fierce and demanding, as if the word had let loose a flood in her that spilled over and washed away her hesitation. Precisely as Hannibal had meant them to.

And he is pleased, so pleased.

The second bell rings, indicating that all children need to report to classes, she jumps back as if she’s been singed.

____________________________

They make no sound at all as they walk inside.

But he doesn’t protest this. After all he has time, time to explore the previously hidden parts of her, it’s a knowledge makes his own desire burn like a pilot light.  

Because the beauty of what he has created is breathtaking.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sooo...you know those warning tags? Well, I'd say they apply to this chapter and the next few. Also, I should note that this is not in any way, shape, or form a healthy love (I'm certainly not trying to depict it as one). It's very destructive and manipulative, not unlike Hannibal himself. 
> 
> But hopefully it's not coming completely out of left field for people as far as the characterization goes, because I have to admit that I found the ending of the "Hannibal" novel to have some pretty incestuous overtones and I always wondered what Hannibal's relationship with Mischa would have looked like if she'd lived a little longer. Which is probably what made me decide to write a response to this prompt in particular.


	7. Chapter 7

As amid the hectic music and cocktail talk

She hears the caustic ticking of the clock.

 

Sylvia Plath- Cinderella

_______________________

The seasons of the following year seem to want to make up for the mildness of the previous ones with a vengeance. The snow piles so high and the chill of the wind bites so fiercely that the children are often unable to leave the building.

Outside the world is muffled by the heavy drifts that surround them, and inside every sense is intensified by the insulation. The sky and the ice that enclose them are so bright that it stings the eyes to look at them.

Hannibal and Mischa have been ordered by the Matron to help the proctors look after the younger children, a job they can thank their seven long years of residence in the orphanage for- fortunately there are a few others to help share the burden.

The Matron had originally had some doubts about them, she suspects that some of those that live in residence are a bit frightened of the pair; one only needs to look at Petras to understand why.

But ultimately, she had decided to rely on the Lecter children because they are not outright bullies. In fact, they are almost unfailingly polite and exemplary students. She thinks they can be trusted to look after the little ones without being needlessly cruel to them.

Her bones ache and her joints scream fire, heralding in a cruel winter.

All she can do is try to prepare as best she can with the little she has. Undoubtedly there will be sickness (when large groups of people are close confined for months on end there always is), and exposure will become a problem (there aren’t enough resources to keep the building warm).

What she really fears more than anything else is hunger. She lived through the War as a child and she knows that more than any other ailment, it is hunger that can drive people to acts of terrible desperation.

People who had been acquaintances all their lives try to kill each other over a morsel of food and mothers smother their babies rather than have to watch them slowly starve to death.

Blizzards would come with noise, and dark, and a cold that would seemingly never end. Then, as suddenly as they came, they would stop and leave behind a cruel bite in its wake as a reminder that the wind and snow would return again. 

It’s the worst winter that the area has seen decades, and it leaves her feeling nervous about the relative isolation that residents of Constantin Virnav reside in.

If the government is unable to get through the snows to send their allotted supplies to the nearest town, if the expenditure doesn’t garner clearing the roads till after the blizzards stop,  than it is unlikely that many of the townspeople will survive the winter, much less the state-dependent orphans. Snows usually fall until April and it’s only November now, the radio predicts that the temperatures will fall as low as −45 °C.

As she attends to the children, whose noise has become a hum of constancy in her life, Matron remembers the way that famishment had turned the people she knew into dark beasts during the cold of her childhood.

She can’t help but wonder what monsters would be born from the claws and teeth of this winter.

__________________

The halls are dark and blessedly quiet when Hannibal comes to find her. She supposes that it is the clear sky and the full moon illuminating the windows that give her hiding spot away.

Mischa is sitting in a patch of moonlight, reclining against one of the walls of an empty classroom, with a blanket wrapped around her and book in her lap.

At the moment she’s trying to find a semblance of peace.

Being trapped indoors for months on end, with a large group of loud, unwashed, and restless children has been rather torturous. It seems no matter where she looks, someone is getting into something they shouldn’t or breaking another thing or generally just being a nuisance.

But this isn’t what has her mind roiling in unease. Though she would never admit it to her brother, her dreams have become unbearable as of late.

She absently runs the pad of her thumb over her blunted nails, it gives her a tiny shock of surprise, she isn’t used to having them so short. Sometimes she imagines that she can still see the blood imbedded in them, in spite of the fact that it had been months since they had been stained with gore. Months, since she scrubbed her hands so vehemently that they cracked and coated themselves red again.

Hannibal had found her then in the midst of a panic attack, had taken her hands in his own, and with gentle movements had pared them down until only tiny slivers of white were visible.  She has been diligent about keeping them clipped ever since.

She turns to the book and lets the familiar words wash over her. Reading them is like looking at herself, concentrated and poured into the ink printed on the pages. Cruel edges and passionate curves aligned and made beautiful. It produces a stillness in her that’s almost seamless.

But not quite perfect. Perfect was – _control. blood coating her hands. he lives or dies only because I choose_ \- something else. 

“You have all the poems memorized, yet you still carry it with you,” Hannibal is wrapped up in his own blanket leaning in the doorway.

Mischa smiles bleakly, her agitation is signaling to him like the fine tremors of the lines in a spider’s web, “I just like to have it.”

He chuckles, “Considering you traded a brand new pair of shoes for the book, I suppose it’s good that you’re getting its full value.”

“It was more than worth some pinched toes.”

“Was it?”

“You know it was.”

“It’s certainly helped you get over your frustration with the English language.”

She adjusts her coverings and he sinks down next to her adding his blanket to her own. When he stretches out his arm, she gratefully tucks her head under his chin; they huddle together like the children that they no longer are.

“Hannibal, we’ve run out of food. I heard Matron telling First Proctor.”

“I know,” His voice is soft.

“Did you see Karolina?”

“Yes, she’s ill. So are Daniel and Tomas.”

Mischa sighs, “Just once I’d like for you to be wrong in your predictions.”

“In this case,” he confesses, “I wish I had been.”

“What are we going to do?”

“Survive.”

“How?”

“By any means necessary.”

With the same arm that embraces her he traces the place where her vertebrae peek out from the collar of her slightly overlarge sleep shirt and she breathes into his neck, imagining that with just a little extra pressure he could cause irreparable damage.

 It’s strange how he can be equal measures of sensual and brutal. One propensity never outweighing the other. Even stranger is how much she appreciates that about him.

“So,” he says turning the conversation, “tell me more about your fascination with this morbid poet.”

“You’re one to talk,” she laughs, “I remember, when they took us all into town to listen to the recordings. You _wept_ when they put on the final piece of ‘Aida’. The scene where lovers are being buried alive.”

“ _O Terra, Addio_ ,” he confirms, “and this is the way these poems make you feel?”

Mischa nods, then smiles, “It’s more personal.”

“Better than Catullus?” he teases.

“Yes,” Mischa laughs, “I’m surprised that you haven’t read them yet.”

“I was going to ask to borrow the book after you first acquired it, but when I saw how much it touched you, I decided to wait.”

She feels her brow arch, “Why?”

“So you could tell me yourself what you cherish about them.”

Taking a deep breath the girl considers, “She struggles with how she perceives herself, how others perceive her, and how she wishes to be perceived.”

She pokes him in the chest playfully, “A problem you’ve never had.”

It’s true. For as long as she can remember Hannibal has never struggled with his sense of self. He knows exactly who he is, how he allows himself to be viewed, and he certainly has never felt anything resembling shame.

“In any case, the poet recognizes that all three are separate states of being and the struggle comes not from the separation of those states, but in how she can’t make peace with any of them.”

Mischa picks up the book and flipping through the pages points to a passage which her brother reads with interest, “ _I am your opus, I am your valuable, The pure gold baby, that melts to a shriek. I turn and burn. Do not think I underestimate your great concern.”_

Hannibal looks down at her, “Is this how you believe that I perceive you?”

“I am your creation.”

He doesn’t respond.

She turns so that she’s facing him directly and whispers, “A flawed work, no doubt, but still a creature of your making.”

Hannibal tilts his head probingly, and a logical part of her is warning plaintively that she is acting on impulse, the combination of exhaustion and fear are a heady cocktail producing her recklessness. It’s a warning Mischa can’t heed, because the same fear that gnaws at the edges of her mind, also drives caution to an impossibly distant place.

“It’s what I’ve always wanted,” she admits raggedly, “for you to turn all of your focus on me. You’ve done exactly that, molded the person that you wanted me to be, and I’ve poured myself into that mold… but I’m dented and bruised in so many places. All the places where I don’t fit.”

“What makes you think that I want you to be anything other than what you are now?”

Oh, his words are so clever, he knows exactly how to use them push and tug at her vulnerabilities. She pulls the blanket up around her neck, closes her eyes, and inhales deeply. For the first time in a long time she wants to cry. It’s foolish, tears don’t help anything. Nonetheless, she wishes for the briefest moment that she could remember how to weep.

She knows that he is performing. Crafting and honing his lies, as if he has been waiting for the right moment to let them pounce (in all likelihood Hannibal probably has done precisely that). The pain comes from the uncertainty that such clever acting produces. Doubt and insecurity have turned into a hard knot inside her that breathe painful possibilities into her thoughts. They whisper to her that perhaps he only loves her because she is _convenient_.

Of course the worst part of it is that Hannibal understands all this, he can see her fears and never quite confirms or denies them.

“You do. You’ve been transforming me, burning out the impurities and I…” she all but hisses out the next word, “… _love_ you for it.”

Not for the first time, she wonders whether it’s possible that she’s gone insane and not realized it.

He tugs the blanket off her shoulders “It’s true, I’ve molded and focused you until you were ready to be set aflame, but the essential materials were always yours. The things in me that you venerate are simply a way for you to worship a ruthless drive for life within yourself.”

She supposes that there isn’t much good in pointing out that ‘molded’ and ‘focused’ are other ways of saying ‘trained’ and ‘manipulated’. Like many things in her life, mentioning such things would be pointless. She’s done it all to herself, and if she’s being honest, it’s impossible to imagine her life differently.

With her mind’s eye she envisions finite cracks deepening into fissures, but her only reaction is to lean forward, using her weight press him into the wall, “Right now everything in me is screaming to live.”

Hannibal is shivering  – not much, just a little, a fine vibration in his muscles, as if he can hear those silent screams,  “That which burns cannot know much peace.”

Mischa gives a breathy chuckle and murmurs into his lips, _“Out of the ash, I rise with my red hair, And I eat men like air.”_

__________________

The end of December is fast approaching and the snows have piled high enough to completely obscure them from the world, even the few hours’ drive into the nearby town has become an impossibility.

A handful of the children have become ill thanks to the starvation and freezing temperatures that have left them open to disease.

It happens quickly; they become listless and then are taken by a fever that leaves them delirious.

Within two weeks there are three deaths and dozens more infected.

Their small cache of medicine is used up in a matter of days.

Desperate calls are made via the CB radio to request aid. The answer is always the same: until the weather clears, there is no way to get the relief trucks through.

Matron suspends all classes; she and three other proctors at Constantin Virnav have their hands full converting the top floor of the building into a makeshift infirmary, though with no medicines there is little that can be done for the ailing.

By the time that there is enough of a break in between the blizzards for aid to come, almost half of the children have been stricken with the fever.

First off the truck is Dr. Andrich, a young man fresh from a Soviet medical institute. He takes one look at the rash that covers the torso and faces of its sufferers and confirms the symptoms that he had gleaned  from descriptions over the CB: Scarlet Fever.

Communicating with the staff of the orphanage has been a struggle. He doesn’t speak Lithuanian, and has had to rely on translations from a soldier who knows basic Russian. Luckily, his hazarded diagnosis has proved correct and they have been able to bring the appropriate medicines to begin Phage therapy.

Andrich knows that the United States and Western Europe use penicillin treatments to minister to the sufferers of this particular disease. Unfortunately, the current Soviet administration has put a ban on wide-spread production, and civilians don’t rate as a high enough importance to treat with the expensive drug. As he looks at the faces of the children, many of whom are under the age of ten, he wishes he could tell his superiors _exactly_ what to do with their scale of importance. 

Taking a steadying breath, he speaks to his translator, “We need to start evacuating the healthy children first, then move on to those that are ill, but well enough to survive transport.”

The translator, a harsh man called Grutas, leaves to confer with his fellow officers in rapid Lithuanian. When he returns he confirms the directives, “Evacuation will start immediately, we don’t know how long this spell of good weather will last, if the snows begin again there will be food enough to last for a few weeks.”

The doctor can’t help the slight shiver that the thought of being snowbound produces, “Very well. Has all the medical equipment been placed in the sickroom?”

“Yes and you can contact headquarters using channel 27.275 on the CB.”

Andrich is concerned, “You won’t be staying?”

“I’ll be here sporadically.”

“What if I need to communicate…” he begins.

Grutas cuts him off, “You’ll have to make do, doctor.”

Delivering this clipped retort, the soldier marches outside and begins to bark out orders.

There is a general outcry from the children who have to thrust swollen feet, stiff with cold, into their shoes before they are herded outside to the waiting trucks.

When the majority of the soldiers leave, Andrich is disturbed by the silence that surrounds him.

Medical wards are usually full of noise and bustle, but it is not the case here. The uninfected have been without sustenance for so long that they do little besides sleep, they don’t have the energy for much else.

Those who are sick don’t sneeze, cough, or even cry out much. They suffer as silently as they have been taken ill, the infirmity carrying them away with fevered dreams and soft murmurs.

The top floor is lined with cots, a child resting on each, a few are leaning over the invalids to offer water to cool heated brows. One of them, a young girl, is singing softly to a figure resting on the pallet beneath her. “ _Ein Männlein steht im Walde ganz still und stumm_ ,” her voice doesn’t carry much of a tune. “ _Es hat von lauter Purpur ein Mäntlein um_.”

Turning from the pair, he spots a sturdy looking woman of advancing years and attempts to ask her which of the children have been ill longest, he’s answered with a confused look.

The little songbird behind him stops her warbling and speaks to the woman (the Matron, he presumes) who responds rapidly.

When the Matron finishes speaking, the girl tells him in accented, but understandable Russian, “She says that those four,” she points to a cluster of pallets, “are the worst off.”

Andrich sends silent thanks to whatever deity allowed at least one of the people here to speak his language, then moves towards the patients most in need of his help. He administers the phage treatment, all the while knowing that for these ones, help has come too late, the signs of streptococcal pneumonia and meningitis are all over them.

To distract himself from the grim prognosis he speaks over his shoulder to the girl who had taken up her song again, “Young lady…”

“Mischa.” 

“Mischa,” he corrects, “is there anyone here with symptoms outside of the fever, rash, and sore throat?”

She shakes her head, “Not that I’ve seen. I’ve only been in the sick ward for a week though.”

“Have you been ill yourself?”

Her voice is flat and the doctor can’t tell if she’s lying or not when she responds, “No. I…I had the fever when I was a child.”

“I see. It’s still a rather big risk to take.”

Mischa shrugs and strokes the boy’s bronzed hair gently. Andrich wonders idly if the two are paramours as he takes a seat on the floor next to her, dutifully inspecting the progress of the patient.

“What’s his name?”

“Hannibal Lecter.”

The doctor blinks slowly, “Unusual name.”

“Papa had high hopes for him.”

“He’s your brother?”

“Certainly,” she asserts.

“I see,” Andrich mused, “and he’s unresponsive?”

“You heard me singing?” Mischa queried.

“Yes.”

She rolled her eyes, “If my brother had been at all cognizant he would have been clapping his hands over his ears and questioning how I can even manage to butcher a children’s song.” 

Managing to choke back his laughter the doctor continues his examination, “Everyone’s a critic.”

“I know that I sound like a sick cat when I sing,” she retorts, “I was hoping I could annoy him into responding.”

“Well, there is good news,” he comforts, “we’ve caught the illness before some of the more damaging aspects could take root. There’s no sign of sepsis or kidney infection.”

The girl narrows her pale eyes, “What’s the bad news?”

“He’s going to need another ten days of treatment and I can’t risk moving him. The drive to town will take two days at least and he’d be sure to catch pneumonia in the interim,” Andrich doesn’t mention that mixed phage preparations only equate to the complete cure of 50 out of 100 patients with resistant infections. To tell her that would be cruel.

“What about them,” She indicates the children he just treated.

“We didn’t get here in time,” he admits with a sigh, “but there is every reason to believe that your brother will make a full recovery, which is why I must insist that you get on the next transport.”

“No,” Mischa cuts him off hotly.

“I promise I’ll take good care…”

“I said no.”

“Miss Lecter,” he begins, “there are going to be many more deaths before your brother is well enough to travel.”

“I’m no stranger to death;” the girl contradicts, “we’ve all become familiar with it at some time or another.”

“Is there anything I can do to convince you?”

Mischa, sensing that she’s won the argument, shakes her head with a smile, “I’m afraid not,” Her accent draws the words out with a strange lilt that he’s unaccustomed to hearing uttered in his mother tongue.

Andrich makes a noncommittal noise in the back of his throat.  At least he’ll have someone to converse with for the foreseeable future.

_____________

As the days pass the weather continues its reprieve, but there’s something savage in the air that has everyone on edge.

Hannibal’s fever has dropped enough for him to be conscious of the full effects of his illness. His cheeks and hands are burning. The places where the rash has peeled away are both numb and raw at the same time.

He drifts in between the waking world and his mental palace.

_Hannibal is chasing after Mischa._

_But he can only catch glimpses of her retreating figure. The rooms of his mind pass in a blur as she wanders in and out impetuously with a flash of white skin and her wild unruly hair trailing out behind her as she spirits away._

“Hannibal?”

“His fever is still too high for my liking.”

_She leads him into the wilderness where a cluster of small mounds dusted with snow mark the fallen bodies of his quarry. Above each rise is a carved figure of animated marble, looking far more beautiful in death than they ever had been in life._

_Matas hangs suspended, upside-down, his right foot is bound to the tree above him and his left foot remains free, bent at the knee and tucked in behind his right leg. His arms are curved, with hands held behind his back, the expression on his face is serene._

_Emilija, with her disdainful nature finally subdued, stands with her head tilted and her hair swept back. Her neck is lengthened as if expecting the strike of a blade and there is glazed terror in her eyes. A white rose grows at her feet._

_Behind her, Kalvis kneels in supplication. The man who had once overseen the allotment of food and was never ill-disposed to a bribe now utters a silent, wordless scream. His eyes have been put out, rivulets engraved on his cheeks, holding a handful of dust in one hand and an empty urn in the other._

_There are others keeping these three company, bonded close in death though incapable of breath, or speech, unable to take comfort in one another. They would rest and rot right here._

_Even as he looks at them and feels the satisfaction of his design he knows that it is incomplete._

_Something is missing._

“He’s burning up, but he’s acting like he’s freezing,” His sister’s words are panicked, he can taste it colored with the sharp tang of his fever. 

The second voice is masculine and unfamiliar, “His body is trying to kill the infection by convincing itself that it’s too cold… so his temperature continues raise.”

“Then why are you taking his blankets away?”

“Because he’s doing too good a job of it,” is the grunted response, “he’s overheating.”

Mischa makes an exasperated noise and whispers in Hannibal’s ear, “Trust you to be too effective at convalescing.”

There is a rustle of fabric and the sights, the sounds, the smell of her fear, the feel of oppressive heat all recede in a wave of bitter cold.

_The ground beneath his feet is covered in a layer of snow that he doesn’t leave tracks in as he moves. There is a large block of ice beneath his hands so cold that it feels like a blaze in his palms._

_Slowly but surely he is sculpting the form that the ice harbors in its depths._

_The figure is Mischa._

_He recognizes her features as they take shape beneath his fingers._

_The figure is not Mischa._

_She is too perfect; all her little flaws have been erased. He knows that if the snow forged mold was to open her transparent lips and sing, every note would be flawless._

“There’s nothing more we can do for him, you should try and get some rest,” the doctor says firmly, “there’s nothing to do except wait.” 

His sister voice is weary, “Then I’ll wait here.”

“The trucks have returned again,” Andrich cajoles, “there’s more help to be had now.”

“Can we risk moving him?”

“No,” is the response, “he’s reaching the crisis. If he passes through it then we can chance moving him.”

“If?”

_Suddenly Mischa (the real Mischa) is standing beside him, except she only comes up to his knee, the same age that she was all those years ago when he led her out to the pond. The first day that he truly saw her and they began to twine together. It’s strange to think that she was once so small; they have always grown in proportion, one never surpassing the other too drastically._

_This small version of his sister looks up at the ice sculpture and then back at him. The expression on her face is one of indescribable hurt._

_In a blur of movement she rushes forward and pushes the sharpened copy of herself to the ground, looking satisfied when it shatters into hundreds of pieces at her feet._

_She’ll suffer no pale imitations._

_Turning her back to him, though the snow on the ground has become thick, she walks away with ease and with each step she ages a little until she becomes the Mischa that he knows today._

_She stops and he catches up to her as she peers down at the inky black pit that sits inches from her bare feet._

_He gazes too, though his look is of consternation, the sight of it gives him a forbiddingly prescient sensation._

Mischa is resting at his side, sitting on the ground with her head propped up against his mattress, apparently undaunted by the notion of sleeping inches away from someone who was critically ill.

A man only a decade or so older than himself places his hands on Hannibal’s face with the authority of a doctor and smiles, “It seems that the wolf spared the mare.”

Hannibal raises himself, careful not to disturb his sister, his disused vocal chords feel grated by the harsh consonants and full vowels of the Russian language, “How long have I been unwell?”

“Close to three weeks,” was the response, “and just in time, the evacuation has almost been completed. There are only two other children besides yourself and your sister left.”

“There’s no one else?”

“None, other than a few soldiers to oversee the last transition, and unfortunately we’ll probably be fewer in numbers before the order to march comes,” the man gives a significant glance at the two other occupied cots.

Mischa stirs slightly, unconsciously adjusting her head before she settles again, the Doctor lowers his voice, “Your sister has been very devoted to your care,” he intones “she wanted me to wake her as soon as you regained consciousness. I thought it kinder to let her sleep.”

The Doctor walks away to administer to his other two patients, Hannibal takes the opportunity to give Mischa a light shake, she awakes with a sharp inhale and pulls her face away from the side of the cot where the edge has left a line in her cheek. 

She smiles and raises a hand up to his forehead, “I knew that you would be fine.”

“Did you, now?”

“Hmm…” she sleepily affirms and crawls onto the cot next to him, “you’ve always been good at getting out of the woods.”

He doesn’t get the chance to reply before she drifts off to sleep again.

They lie there together for some time before a noise disturbs him from his half-slumber, it’s the graveled voice of the soldier Grutas, “Doctor, we’ve just gotten word over the CB. A storm is coming.”

There is a long pause before he questions quietly, “How long?”

“Hours, at most.”

Andrich’s voice holds poorly masked dread, “Then we’ll have to wait for the next break between blizzards.”

Another break between storms. In the height of winter. With little to no supplies.

Beside him, Mischa’s eyes twitch rapidly, in the throes of a dream.

_He can’t see his sister any more, only the swirling white around him and the blackness of the pit before him. Then her voice sounds clear in his ears, “If you're afraid of wolves, don't go to the forest.”_

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm sorry to leave you all in suspense -though I guess anyone who has read the description of this fic won't be terribly surprised by the outcome- but I tried to make up for this quasi-cliffie by giving you a much longer chapter than usual. 
> 
> Also, I'd like to apologize to any cannon purists, I know that I'm changing things a bit by making Hannibal the one to get ill (rather than Mischa). But since I aged both characters up a bit...well, obviously a six year old Hannibal couldn't have stood much of a chance but a sixteen year old would be much more capable of putting up a fight with his captors in normal circumstances- thus, I decided to make Hannibal the one who gets ill. 
> 
> Also, just I couldn't resist making a few parallels between Hannibal and Will. Making them both lose so much, due in part because an illness makes them vulnerable.


	8. Chapter 8

Now we, returning from the vaulted domes

Of our colossal sleep, come home to find

A tall metropolis of catacombs

Erected down the gangways of our mind.

 

Sylvia Plath- Doom of Exiles

 

_________________

 

_He remembers light, but he can no longer see. He has fallen deep into an oubliette in his mind, blinded to the world. Occasionally there are painful noises that echo like phantom pains (there and not really there)._ _He doesn't like the sound because it carries terrible things with it._

_Instead he focuses on the darkness. It’s so deep it leaves no place to stand, and all his dead lie in wait for him. But there is no drowning in this darkness, no struggle to breathe on it, for it has been a starting-point to his life; so it must also be his destination._

“He’s not reacting to any stimulus.”

Doctor Urbonas shakes his head, “No pupil response either.”

“Is there any evidence of head trauma?” the nurse asks with an anxious pitch in her tone. The dead stare of the boy in their care unnerves her.

“None,” he responds, “his shoulder is fractured, and a patch of skin on the back of his neck has been pulled away. He’s obviously malnourished, but no head injuries.”

“More has to have happened in that place than was put in the Captain’s report,” she retorts waiving a hand in the boy’s direction, “Look at him! He’s catatonic.”

_Even here in the pitch black there are shadows, he can feel them move. They watch him and he watches them, none are bothered by the lack of light, they see each other clearly in the dark. He’s bleeding out, he can feel the warmth of it soak him further by the moment, except he can't find the wound to staunch the flow._

_It’s a long time before he realizes that the blood isn’t his own._

The doctor makes a noise of exasperation, “Well, right now all we have to go on is the report.”

The nurse inquires blandly, her expectations not high, “Does it give any helpful information?” 

“Not really,” Urbonas flips through the sheets on the clipboard, “it says that the orphanage was evacuated when they were able to get the trucks through, except for those quarantined there with the fever.”

“Is there any chance that it was the Scarlet Fever that caused this?”

“No,” he continues, “the doctor at hand listed Hannibal as making a full recovery.”

“I don’t suppose he put in any other notes?”

“Frustratingly vague,” he says in disgust, “the man listed four children alive when the snows started up again.”

The nurse cranes her neck to look at the report, “So where are the other three children?”

_One of the shadows is whispering to him. He stares at it for long enough that he can just make out a face. The face continues to slowly advance closer to him, filling his senses so that he can't just ignore this shadow like he has done to the others._

_Its words are too low for him to hear. They trail around him like a light breeze._

_There is memory in those words._

“Two died within days of the first storm,” he flips a page, “they were buried in shallow graves outside the orphanage.”

“The bodies were found?”

“Yes,” he affirms, “they were found, though the wolves had been at them before the ground froze.”

“And the third child?” the woman’s voice is taut.

“His sister,” Urbonas skims his eyes across the sheets in his hands, “Mischa. No evidence of her. Andrich –the doctor- listed her as having been taken by the fever.”

“Then where is her body?” the nurse scoffs, “Do they really expect us to believe that they remembered where the other two were buried and forgot where her grave was?”

“Apparently so.”

_Words, words, words._

_He’s drenched in them. He still can’t make them out, though it doesn’t stop them from coming. He has to admire the persistence._

_The shadow has transformed itself. He can feel her shape ripple._

_Not a something anymore._

_Someone._

_Her figure disappears and reappears, but her voice is constant even when her identity eludes him._

“So what on earth happened?” the nurse asks darting a glance at Hannibal, she feels awkward talking over him, as if he weren’t there. Even if figuratively speaking, he isn’t.

“Read between the lines.”

Her brows furrow, “I don’t understand.”

“The storms kept up for many months,” he explains “they had enough food to last for only one.”

“How did they survive?”

“How indeed?” his voice is grim and the tone makes her take a seat, it’s a prelude to a thing that she doesn’t want to understand, she blurts out a question that she already knows the answer to in an attempt to evade it, “They starved the children?”

“Undoubtedly,” he confirms, “and that would have stretched rations a bit longer. Not long enough though and Hannibal would never have survived for that long without food.”

She feels puzzled, “Did they supplement with hunting?”

“In the dead of winter? Only the wolves would be out and they travel in packs. It would be too dangerous for four barely armed men (one not even a soldier) to attempt to take on a wolf pack,” He gives a bleak laugh, “I’m sure if pressed they’ll say they stumbled on a deer or some such.”

“Then what did they really do?” she asks, all the while hoping he has no idea, or that he’ll lie.

She should have remembered that he doesn’t lie. There’s a reason why the other doctors let Urbonas deliver bad news to patients, he doesn’t flinch away from the truth, nor does he let others shy away from it, “Anna, they never found the girl’s body.”

“I know they never found…” she starts off, feeling edgy at the suspense, then realization dawns on her “they never found her body…oh my God.”

_She’s laughing._

_The sound isn’t mocking, rather it is like a fire that caves in and crumbles towards its own consumption. Her words finally sound clear to him. So rich they might have been cast in bronze long ago. They course though his body with the circulation of his blood and breath._

_Above him in the blackness, stars appear._

_“Clever,” she tells him, “you built your dungeons so well that you can’t find your way out of them. I was wrong, there are some places you can get lost in, and naturally they would have to be of your own making.”_

_“This is a dream.”_

_“Is it?”_

_He strains his sight to make out her form, “You’re dead.”_

_“Yes.”_

_She wraps him in arms that encircle but do not touch._

The Doctor reaches into a drawer and pulls out a cigarette case, it contains a single roll and an old one at that, it has been sitting in the holder for over five years. He’d quit, but now seems an appropriate time to start again.

Meanwhile, the Nurse sits with her hands clasped over her mouth, horror stricken. When she recovers enough to speak, she whispers half to herself, as if afraid the boy will suddenly come to himself, “You don’t think he…no, no he couldn’t have…he’s too traumatized for that.”

Urbonas doesn’t comment. In truth there is no way to tell one way or the other. In spite of his morose reputation, he has no wish to give the poor woman nightmares, so he keeps some of his silence. He’d only helped Anna to see the truth because she’s a smart woman who would have eventually come to the correct conclusion, and he wants to circumvent the next action he knows she’ll want to take.

“We should start a formal inquiry,” she states, getting to feet and moving with purpose.

He puts a restraining hand on her arm, “We can’t.”

“What?” she splutters, “Don’t tell me you want them to get away with this?”

“No,” he says firmly, it’s a ugly thing he’ll have to make her understand, “but if you start an inquiry now and the boy won’t get the help he needs.”

“So the girl just becomes an unfortunate sacrifice?”

_“I think that we built our memory palaces too well.” She says with amusement, “Like Daedalus. Our creations grow and change of their own volition.”_

_“Yours grew into me.”_

_“It’s what you were always working towards, wasn’t it? Even if we didn’t quite comprehend just how good a job we would make of it.” She speaks pointedly, “Besides, you must admit that there is a certain balance in it.”_

_“Oh?”_

_She takes his fingers and laughs at the obvious metaphors for the twining of flesh and spirit, “I’m not a foolish little girl to be manipulated and shaped with your words, not anymore.”_

_“It wasn’t only like that,” he tells her softly, willing her to understand, because he has no idea what this Mischa who lives solely in his mind is thinking._

_“I know that,” she murmurs tenderly, “and now you and I can love equally. I can see all the things you’ve been hiding from me. But you can’t see all of what I’ve become.”_

_The knowledge saddens him._

_She sees that as well._

_“It’s our nature,” she smiles at him, “when we rise from the ashes we return in a changed form.”_

“Think about it,” he tells her determinedly though not unkindly, “the government has found a family member living in France. Right now they’re willing to allow him to relocate across the border. He’ll have a new life.”

Anna makes a sound of protest.

The Doctor continues as if he never heard it, “If you start an investigation now Hannibal will get so buried in red tape and procedure that he would never be able to leave.”

She sits back down limply and says in a choked voice, “I hate this.”

“So do I,” he confesses as he takes a seat next to her. “We’ll do what we can for him now. Perhaps someday when he’s better recovered he’ll be able to bring up charges against these monsters. After all, ten years ago getting a legal permit to migrate across the border would have been impossible, no matter the circumstances. Maybe in another ten years -given the way things are going- it will be safer to begin proceedings.”

Her lips are pressed in a firm line, “You said ‘better recovered’.  He won’t fully recover, will he? Who could?”

The old man sighs, “You might be surprised. The only thing that matches the fragility of children is their resilience. Besides we don’t know what he was like before.”

“What do you mean?”

“I mean that the life of an orphan is rarely an easy one,” he explains, “his file says that he and his sister lost their parents to Nationalist incursion.  He’s been witness to horror before.”

“Do you think he’ll bounce back this time?”

He leans forward and looks into the hollow eyes of the boy in question, “Hannibal strikes me as a survivor.”

_“Do you remember it?” he asks her, feeling tense._

_“Dying? I don’t recall many specifics, only how it felt”_

_“And how did it feel?”_

_“It’s like being caught in a blaze, one that both hurts and warms,” she reminiscences whimsically, “the last thing I remembered in life was a rapture, a little death.”_

_“You sound almost wistful.”_

_“The feeling is hard to describe,” she admits, “I suppose ‘wistful’ fits the best.”_

_“And your situation is rather unique.”_

_“True,” she says with a practical tone._

_“You know the way out,” the words are a statement, not a question._

_“Yes,” she discloses, “the question is: Are you ready to return to the land of the living?”_

_He feels his lips twitch, “Is this the land of the dead?”_

_“Nobody here but us ghosts.”_

_“Then I suppose I’m ready to go.”_

_With tremendous force, something radiant comes into him like a strike of lightning. He can scarcely see for the power of it. His hair might be on fire, his whole skeleton is luminous, then he is staring into the dark dazzle around him._

_What he sees is the midnight sun._

Hannibal is in a hospital room.

The smell of bleach and disinfectant is overwhelming. Everything from the sheets to the ceiling is white and sterile, even the stiff gown they have dressed him in.

He’s examining a chart mapping the chambers of the heart with interest when a nurse walks in and exclaims over his new found lucidity. She walks out in a rush to inform the doctor and as the door glides closed he hears Mischa whisper in his ear.

 “ _Happy hunting._ ”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So this isn't the cheeriest update for Valentines Day. Sorry about that! 
> 
> I hope that I did an okay job of depicting what the oubliettes in Hannibal's memory palace would be like, I was a little nervous when I was writing it.
> 
> Thanks for all the lovely reviews. You guys are awesome!


	9. Chapter 9

Stalk without wrinkle,

Pool in which images

Should be grand and classical

Not this troublous wringing of hands,

This dark ceiling without a star.

 

Sylvia Plath- Child

___________________

 

When most of the people of the town talk about Katya Andrich, they refer to her as ‘that poor woman’.

She hadn’t started off that way.

Ten years ago, she had been considered a lucky woman who had married a young doctor with hopeful prospects.

In the winter after his internship, he had taken a government job attending to a group of sick children in a rural area of Lithuania. He, along with a small contingent of soldiers and a few of the children in their care, had been cut off from the main town due to the harsh weather.

That’s when things started to fall apart.

Katya, when she received word of it, had spent the months in a state of uncertainty and fear. She’d been plagued by nightmares of her husband dying in increasingly gruesome ways – peculiar given that the real threats to him were exposure and starvation, not some nameless monster out of a horror story.

Still, the dreams haunted her, only easing slightly when breaks in the weather would allow the snowbound group to get word through on the CB.

What she hadn’t known was that the nightmares would never altogether cease because her husband would never come back, not really.

Oh his body was present. She could still remember every detail of the moment when she had first seen him again after the long separation. The way that she had grasped his wasted frame against her own and shook with relief. But the person that she had married was gone.

In his place was a secretive man who took to hiding food in strange places around the house and refused to speak about the long scar on his abdomen that hadn’t been present before he left. He became racked with his own nightmares that left him wrung out and exhausted. On particularly bad nights, the house would reverberate with his screams and even then he wouldn’t talk to her about it.

He started drinking heavily in a vain attempt to ignore whatever thoughts were haunting his mind. The small town that they lived in had little else to do but talk, nearly everyone had noticed the decline in the doctor, and rumors spread like wildfire. Some believed that he had lost his nerve, there were whispers that some of the children under his care had died and that perhaps their loss had shaken him. Or that the stress of near starvation had left him in a permanent state of fear.

Katya herself was as in the dark as everyone else. For a long time she had received no inkling from him about what had happened during those months. Then one night, almost exactly a year after he had come back, he told her something that convinced her that she didn’t want to know more. The chill of winter had exacerbated his turbulent thoughts and provoked him to traveling directly from his practice to the closest bar after he closed his office. He didn’t even bother with the pretense of stopping at home.

She, in turn, had gotten used to going to sleep alone and waking up in the same way. So she had been unnerved when the sound of her husband’s heavy sobs had shaken her out of a deep sleep in the early hours of the morning.

“What is it?” she asked him and then sighed. She was getting increasingly tired of asking that question and of the silence that was his only answer. For a long while she thought he would continue to keep his quiet, the only sound between them were his cries.

Katya had just turned over in frustration, attempting to go back to sleep when he whispered, “We never should have done it.”

“I thought of all the people that I _might_ help and I believed that I could make it right…” he made a choked noise and repeated, “…we never should have done it.”

The words had frightened her and for the first time she considered that she might be as much as a coward as he was, because she had kept her eyes closed and pretended to be asleep.

In some ways, their marriage had gotten easier after that; now neither of them were eager to communicate. But the newfound complacency brought about an unforeseen complication. Six months after their unspoken agreement Katya found out that she was pregnant.

The revelation had shattered whatever peace that clung in their marriage, though at first she had been hopeful. She thought that perhaps a child might help them reconnect, might give them both someone to love. Those hope had were quickly shot down.

When he found out, he started drinking more than he ever had previously, and after the delivery he had shuddered at the pronouncement that he now had a daughter.

Katya resolved to give the baby girl – Arina – extra love to make up for what she now knew the child would never receive from her father.

Over seven years have passed since Arina was born, and in spite of the time, her husband could barely bring himself to look at their daughter in the face.

Katya can pinpoint the exact moment when she began to hate her husband.  

When her daughter was three years old, as she was being tucked into her bed, she had asked her mother why her father didn’t like her.

Needless to say, the only thing that powered their marriage anymore was inertia.

So it was strange that she was every once and while still visited by the nightmare of her husband being killed by a monstrous apparition.

It was even stranger that in these dreams, she feels a sense of relief mixed in with the horror.

___________

Mischa is an elusive presence to him now.

She doesn’t always make herself known when he wants her to, and sometimes she shows up when he wishes she wouldn’t.

For example, she had been silent on the long trip from Lithuania to France. Hannibal hadn’t been given books or any form of distraction for the journey, and he would have welcomed her during the week long crossing.

Instead, she had been frustratingly uncommunicative, until Hannibal came face to face with his Uncle Robertas for the first time. Then she had surprised him by speaking up as Hannibal had looked into his uncle’s mismatched eyes, her words were spoken distinctly, “ _He looks like you_.”

Hannibal hadn’t jumped in surprise: that would have been undignified, not to mention obvious.

That night he crawled into a bed much softer than any he’d had before. "Our uncle was curious about you. I told him you were lovely and talented,” he whispered, “I lied of course.”

“ _Of course you did_ ,” he could almost catch a glimpse of her smile in the moonlight, “ _I’m nothing less than beautiful and brilliant._ ”

_______________________

The years span out in this manner, he goes to secondary school, then to the university and onward. Mischa travels with him.

Occasionally, he has a relationship: a boy in his boarding school in France, who paints divinely and blushes when Hannibal brushes the pad of his thumb along the young man’s jaw. A girl in university who tears down the football field with ferocity and has a surprisingly exquisite singing voice –a fact he found out quite on accident. There are a small handful of others who all find him both alluring and fearsome.

None of them pick up on Mischa’s presence in his life, though Mischa takes a definite interest in them; sometimes her interests are aligned with her brother’s and sometimes they differ wildly.

One day, when he’s on holiday, he questions her about it. He’s sitting in the small studio that his uncle has had built for him. Robertas is an artist; he encourages the extraordinary and unusual in his nephew. His aunt does the same and along with her lessons on calligraphy, Nanga, and flower arrangement she imparts to him the Japanese ideals of respect and honor.

“ _You know, I think if I had lived I would have been the jealous type_ ,” he can hear the smirk in her voice, “ _I imagine our lovers would have been torn between the two of us_.”

“In more ways than one.”

“ _Tut tut_ ,” she chides lightly.

A voice sounds behind him, “Communing with the canvas?”

Robertas walks into the room. He is a man who sees much and says little and when he’s analyzing something his head tilts in exactly the same way that Hannibal’s father had, “Sometimes I wonder where your mind goes when you look like that.”

“With my sister,” he answers truthfully.

“Ah,” Robertas intones, “I wish your sister could have lived with us. We need a poet to complete the list of artists in the family.”

“You think she would have been a poet?”

“From what you have told me about her,” the older man says, “I believe so.”

“She had a great passion for language.”

“The most important trait in any poet.”

Mischa responds to this with a trace of yearning, “ _Can you imagine me congressing in artist’s dens with bohemians and vagrants?_ ”

Hannibal responds to both, “Yes.”

“What about you, Hannibal?” Robertas inquires, “Your sketches are remarkable. Is this who you are as an artist? Your true self?”

“My true self?”

“Just because you are good at something does not mean it is what you are meant to do,” his uncle comments, “four generations back you had a grandfather who could play the violin quite beautifully. Instead he chose to pursue painting –though some thought his bow work superior to his brushwork—he felt called to it, it was _his_ passion.”

“How do you know that I’m an artist at all?”

“You are most certainly,” Robertas smiles, “the signs are all over you.”

Hannibal finds the topic provocative, “Then, I don’t believe that sketching is where my true passion lies.”

His Uncle nods, “You have plenty of time to figure out where it does reside.”

“ _He thinks you lack desire_ ,” his sister comments with a disbelieving snort, “ _if only he knew about your appetites. I could tell him a thing or two._ ”

Hannibal thinks back to a night several weeks ago when he had leaned over a body that was resting on a large bed of clear plastic: his real canvas. As with all of the others there is the sense of incompletion, like a grain of salt on a smooth surface, it irritates and needles at him.

“Perhaps I need to travel back home and even explore a little further. Now that the Soviet regime has fallen Eastern Europe is a much safer place to travel through.”

Robertas is pleased with the idea.

___________________

The journey back to Lithuania gives Hannibal time to ponder what Mischa had said, she always was (and is) picky about words, matching them to the situation with the accuracy of a tailor. So he can’t help but be curious about her observation, “ _If only he knew about your appetites_.”

To say the least, it’s an unusual remark. His sister doesn’t offer anything by way of clarification, he senses that she’s waiting for something to happen.

___________________

Andrich is embarrassingly easy to find.

All he has to do is tell a few low level paper pushers that he’s a family member that was lost behind the iron curtain. This, along with some well-placed bribes, is enough to deliver a location on a silver platter. The whole process takes two weeks and much of that time is spent making sure that he has covered his tracks sufficiently enough to prevent anyone else from finding Andrich in the same way.

When he’s satisfied with his determents, Hannibal takes lodgings that are a day’s drive from the doctor’s home.

He learns the man’s routine in a matter of days.

Interestingly, acquainting himself with the habits of the doctor’s wife and child takes longer to learn than his intended victim. They live their lives almost totally divorced from Andrich.

Hannibal is particularly interested in the daughter who is dark-haired and sweet, brightly chattering to anyone who will listen. He can hardly be blamed for taking the opportunity for conversation when the child fortuitously kicks a ball in his direction after he follows her to a park.

A well timed stomp of his foot stops the ball mid-roll and brings the girl to him, just out of the line of sight of any adults. Hannibal dutifully returns the ball and endures himself to her with a smile. Arina puts a temporary halt on her game and elects instead to tell her new friend a story about a fox that gets lost in the forest but finds his way back by sheer cleverness. As she speaks, Hannibal credits her eagerness to commune with strangers to her father’s lack of involvement in her life, like a little bird with a broken wing, she flocks to anyone who will take an interest.

Mischa’s voice travels to his ear in a whisper, “ _Do you think she knows that she’s telling you your own story_?”

He doesn’t get a chance to respond because the girl’s mother is calling. Hannibal sends the child on her way with soft pat on the back.

The fox is never more charming than when he is on the hunt.

_______________

Catching the doctor is almost anti-climactic.

His knee drives into the older man’s solarplexius, sending him crashing down on all fours in a vain attempt to draw air into his lungs, and then with a powerful shove, Andrich’s head makes hard contact with the pavement and sends him spiraling into unconsciousness.

When the doctor is adequately restrained it becomes a matter of patience. What’s coming will make up for the lackluster nature of the capture. It always does.

He likes the feel of it, that moment when he lifts the mask, and they _see_. Hannibal could never be the wolf in sheep's clothing because he has never presented himself as a sheep. Rather he is a cat, mimicking birdsong with such accuracy that the intended victim doesn’t see the threat until it is too late.

So he waits. Savoring the process.

The slow waking, the dawning understanding of what is about to happen, and finally the bursting horror of the knowledge. Because once they see his face, once they gaze behind the veil, they know that there are no other possibilities.  

He is a god, when he takes lives. Superseding the divinity, he proves the inherent weakness in God, who can neither save the innocent nor punish the guilty. Hannibal who _can_ do both, proves his superiority along with his contempt for God, and he does this by his sheer existence.

And in these moments he is _powerful_.

Andrich is no different, and there is even an added measure to the ritual, a moment when the older man realizes not just not just _what_ is happening to him, but _who_ he is at the mercy of, Hannibal can pinpoint the exact moment of recognition.

The room is flooded with a rush of pheromones.

Scalpel in hand, he makes slow and deliberate slashes that cut away the clothing but leave the skin untouched. He wants to give the doctor’s body enough time to dissipate the adrenaline and endorphins that he is awash in.

Hannibal looks at the man tied down on the table, studying the details, particularly the raised scar on his torso. He rubs a thumb over the thin white line. The last thing that Mischa had done in her life.

The placement of the scar, as well as the length and width, tell him that Andrich would have been in a great deal of pain and suffered a not-insignificant amount of blood loss. He can feel his sister preening in his mind.

The touch seems to jolt the good doctor into speech. He babbles disjointedly, “Please…We never should have…I didn’t want to.”

Mischa’s words are venomous, “ _Yet you did. You took my life and stole my flesh with the same hands that you touch your wife with._ ”

Andrich, naturally, cannot hear her and continues to whimper like an animal, “Please no. Not me. I’m sorry!”

Hannibal is steady and cajoling, wringing all the information about the other three soldiers that the man knows, coaxing tidbits out with the offer of survival. It’s ironic that Mischa has become an albatross between the four men. All of them are bound together by their actions and no one can be completely forgotten by the others for fear of discovery. Suspicion, guilt, and blood are leashes of their own making.

When he gets the doctor to metaphorically spill his guts, Hannibal sets about to turning allegory into plain truth.

Andrich sobs, “You said you would let me go!”

“I lied,” responds calmly as he unfolds a bundled cloth with an assortment of cutting instruments each surgically sharp and firmly rooted in a designated spot within the fabric.

“I think about her every day….you don’t know how hard it’s been…to live with it.”

“ _Oh yes_ ,” his sister croons with a voice more solid than he can remember her uttering since before her death, “ _it must be a great burden to be counted among the living_.”

He raises an eyebrow at the doctor’s poor choice of words, “Then allow me to relive you of the weight of it,” The older man’s breathing is now coming in swift and panicked gasps, the word ‘No’ tumbles from his lips so rapidly that it sounds like a prayer.

Hannibal draws his lips back in scorn. Andrich is a paltry creature, unable to carry his guilt or purge the feeling from his being. All too human. It fills him with revulsion that such a man ended Mischa’s life, that he lives and breathes where she no longer can.

Anticipation climb up his spine and the doctor seems to recognize it because he starts to wrench at his restraints, “It wasn’t just us! It was…”

Hannibal feels the dark wings of wrath cast a shadow over him, and with a fast flash of the blade he slashes into skin with easy precision and the man’s words trail off into a cry.

For a long while after that Andrich is nothing but a collection of discordant and throbbing nerve endings. It is a symphony of agony that Hannibal conducts with savage grace that only ends when everything which makes the doctor function has been exposed to the cold air.

Mischa is triumphant when the light leaves the older man’s eyes, “ _Look at me_ ,” she whispers fiercely to him, “… _see me_.”

The muscles in Andrich’s body go lax, “See…”

Before Hannibal can consider is actions, he is cutting and pulling with words drumming in his head to the exclusion of all, “ _Pound of flesh. Pound of flesh. Pound of flesh._ ”

______________________

Katya is not fond of visiting her husband’s practice, but he has been gone for long enough for his patients to come around the house to make inquiries. This isn’t the first time that her husband has gone conspicuously absent from his home, but he’s usually better at keeping up with his work.

She’ll never quite understand what drives him to continue in the medical profession. Whatever urge he once had to help or heal has long since died. Yet he doggedly goes on easing illnesses and fixing bodies.

When Katya had suggested a change in profession (now possible with the regime change) he had reared back as if she had suggested that he change his skin instead.

“I can’t,” he murmured, both sad and frustrated, “it’s not balanced.”

She remembers the words that he had uttered to her years ago about ‘Making it Right’ and feels a shiver.

The subject becomes permanently proscribed.

Katya feels as if she’s violating an unspoken taboo by just setting foot here.

Still, it doesn’t stop her from glancing around his office and the private areas of his practice. She notices a light is on in his examination room, and as she walks towards the room she wonders if her husband has returned from wherever it was that he had been and simply decided to start seeing patients again as if he had never been gone in the first place.

She raps on the door lightly and waits; when there is no acknowledgement from the other side, she turns the doorknob, letting the door slowly creep open with a soft push.

It takes a very long moment for her to process what she sees and when she finally does it is with a scream that she doesn’t even realize that she is uttering.

The amalgamation of every nightmare that she has ever had is hideously laid bare before her.

Even as her horror mounts to a fever, there is a small kernel of peace at its heart. She has spent so much time dreading some unknown horror, that when it finally turns up on her doorstep she is relieved that it can finally be gotten over with.

Police are summoned and investigators are asking questions among themselves.

The doctor has been left almost totally exposed, his torso nearly unrecognizable because all the needles and other tools of his practice are now pierced into the man’s flesh. Stranger though, is that Andrich’s hands have been separated from his body. Both left and right sit on the equipment rack by his head, gloved as if prepped for a patient. In the palms lay surgical sutures.

The body is so mutilated that it takes them days to realize that the lungs and the liver are missing.

_________________

Hannibal returns to his uncle’s house in France only a few weeks after his original departure.

He insists on cooking a celebratory dinner himself.

When the kitchen staff has been cleared from the room, he lays out on the table what is his due, that which Andrich was unworthy of possessing.

Following one of his Aunt’s more complicated recipes, he presses and cuts the stolen flesh beneath his fingers, the movements come with a deep sense of completion. Like a puzzle whose last piece has finally snapped into place.

Feeling pleased he speaks to his sister in a conversational tone, “This is what you meant? When you referred to my appetites?”

“ _That didn’t come from me, which is why I couldn’t answer you before_ ,” Mischa states honestly, “ _I didn’t know why I said it._ ”

Hannibal nods, the words had sprung from a dark well within him, one that only wants to consume and ravage.

_“I can’t tell if the lines between us are becoming clearer or more obscure._ ”

“Does it matter?”

There is an inherent shrug in her response, “ _I don’t know that either_.”

Keeping in mind his uncle’s appreciation for color and his aunt’s enjoyment of decorative arrangement, he crafts and constructs, displaying each dish with meticulousness. He directs everything to be prepared in this matter, from the tablecloth down to the cutlery.

When everything has been arrayed according to his wishes and the dishes have been placed in front of his guardians, he takes a moment to absorb both the satisfaction and the anticipation. His uncle cuts a section of liver and spears it with a fork as his aunt takes a bite and gives an appreciative smile. Exhilaration curls in his chest.

“This is exquisite Hannibal, where did you acquire the meat?” Robertas asks in an admiring tone.

“I brought it back from Lithuania,” the young man offers, “I had quite an ordeal trying to keep it preserved but I thought it would be worth it. After all, it is a piece of home.”

Lady Murasaki nods, “What is the meat?”

“Pork.”

At the other end of the table he can hear his sister laugh. He may not see her, but all the same he knows that she is sitting in on this meal.

Hannibal picks up his silverware, it gleams like liquid in his hands as he savors the meal.

This is his design.

________________

_Jack Crawford is a worthy man. His unfortunate trainee had been accurate in her assessment of him in many respects. Though she had missed certain aspects of Crawford’s makeup, including his propensity for sacrificing those around him for what he perceives to be the greater good._

_Like a master chess player, Jack believes that some pieces will be lost in order to win the game. Still, he is not incapable of remorse, and is concerned enough to take some steps to protect those under his command. These preventative measures aren’t enough._

_Not enough to spare Miriam Lass, the poor girl who only found out that she was a pawn until it was far too late to help herself._

_Nor is it enough to spare Will Graham, who inevitably inches closer towards the trap that is waiting to be sprung upon him._

_He can see the dark glimmers in Graham as they converse with one another, so much raw potential. Will can empathize with anyone, and that in itself is intriguing to Hannibal; the idea that there could again be a person who sees and feels as he does is a heady temptation._

_But what Hannibal is truly fascinated by is not Will’s empathy. Not in what the young man can pick up from others and integrate into himself. No, what is truly captivating about Will Graham lays in the man’s own desires. Hannibal suspects that there is a part of Will that can appreciate the beauty in death and grow to love killing all of his own volition._

_Will is a very guarded individual; his empathy disorder encourages him to build forts to keep people- and consequently the rest of the world- at a distance. Hannibal knows that he needs to be cautious in his approach, give good Will time to adjust to his presence, then place himself in a position of trust in the other man’s life._

_When Garrett Jacob Hobbs kills his wife, and attempts to do the same to his daughter, the chance presents itself on a silver platter._

_Will kills Hobbs and Hannibal walks in to witness the aftermath._

_Graham is panting in panic and terror, shaking as he desperately tries to keep the girl on the floor from bleeding out. Hannibal takes over the task with the steady hands of a surgeon and uses the opportunity to study Will._

_He is gasping and shuddering with the sudden burst of adrenaline that has coursed through his system. There, beneath the fear and horror: excitement. Some part of Will likes what he has done, revels in the life that he has just taken._

_In that moment Mischa leans over his shoulder as he gazes at Will Graham. She embraces him from behind, wrapping arms_ _that are startlingly solid around her brother. When she whispers in his ear, he can feel the breath from her lips caress the back of his neck and hear the interest in her voice as she looks at Will, “Such a beautiful boy.”_

_At this moment, as Will is streaked with gore and reeling from the stimulation of his first kill, Hannibal can’t help but agree._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Yay! So we finally get to see Will...and it only took nine chapters! I want to thank you all for being so patient about indulging my exploration into Hannibal and Mischa's past. I'll be tackling Will's character from here on in...and boy has it been interesting so far! 
> 
> I hope to see you all back here next week for a new chapter (and a new season! Woot!).


	10. Chapter 10

I walk among them,

But none of them are noticing.

Sometimes I think that when I am sleeping

I must most perfectly resemble them—

 

Sylvia Plath- I am Vertical

_________________

 

It takes Will some time to recognize it; he’s got his head wrapped so tightly around the Ripper and the organ harvester that he doesn’t see the oddity when it is first presented to him.

With his mind being what it is, the information is stored to be brought out for future inspection.

As he is lying in bed, surrounded by his dogs with the clock flashing 2:17 am, his conversation with Hannibal comes back to him.

Will had been pouring over the photographs of the Ripper’s brutal artwork before he had drifted off into that strange area between dreaming and waking that always left him feeling so lost and afraid. Hannibal had come in to check up on him and subsequently to pull Will out of his fugue.

Partly because he wanted a second opinion, but mostly because he valued Hannibal’s advice, Will had asked Doctor Lecter for his opinion on the Ripper. “What do you see doctor?”

The doctor had seemed amused at the question, “Sum up the Ripper in so many words?”

“Choose them wisely,” he responded, only half joking.

Then it had happened, Hannibal’s posture shifted, “Oh, I always do. Words are living things. They have personality, point of view, agenda.”

As Doctor Lecter spoke, his rhythm and syntax had changed, subtly but definitely taking on a different cadence. Hannibal had switched back so quickly that Will hadn’t even registered the alteration on a conscious level.

Will shakes himself out of the memory with the reminder that he’s awake at two in the morning obsessing about his therapist’s voice, and with a huff he turns over to bury his face in a pillow.

____________________

_Houses can sometimes feel like living things. They breathe, sleep, and wake. Doctor Lecter’s house is no different, and its heartbeat emanates from the kitchen, where Hannibal now stands, carving at his own body._

_But when the cuts are made, it isn’t flesh that falls. It’s his shadow. Every graze of the knife sunders a dark patch that sits pooling at the doctor’s feet._

_With stricken eyes, Will watches as the shadow moves, standing up in its own skin, reaching forward with inky black hands to caress his cheek._

_In spite of the fear that travels through him, Will leans into the touch, which is as soft as a bird’s wing against his face. Even when the shade opens its arms wide to embrace him, diving into his body and rattling through his blood and bones, the contact maintains a cruel tenderness._

_He’s choking, drowning in the thing that is inside him as Hannibal stirs and walks towards him with a slow even glide. Will feels a burst of relief that travels through him like a balm, because he knows that he can trust Hannibal to protect him._

_Except he doesn’t._

_Instead he takes Will’s face in his hands and fastens his lips to his own. The taste is one of unrestrained power. As Will surrenders to the pull of it, he understands with strange detachment that he is being consumed, both inside and out, like kindling._

_What a lovely way to burn._

___________________

The next evening he sits across from Hannibal, stewing in the remnants of his dream and feeling somewhat ashamed.

He likes Doctor Lecter and doesn’t relish the idea that he is drawing the man into his distorted psyche, like a foil for the representation of the Ripper’s sick fantasies. Even worse is that idea that Will is using the doctor to fuel his own cravings for acceptance. He knows that his mind can be useful (especially to Jack), but he also knows, by the same rote, that his mentality is grotesque. There’s nothing he can do about it, though it doesn’t stop him from coveting the companionship he knows he shouldn’t seek.

He remembers how he had described the Ripper to Jack: as one of those pitiful things that are sometimes born in hospitals. Something that is nominally cared for, but never connected to the mechanisms it needs to survive. It’s the only part of the Ripper that Will can see with any kind of clarity, because it’s something that they have in common. They are both in near permanent disconnect from those that surround them.

The parallel sends a shudder through him.

Hannibal misses none of this as he leans back in his chair, “How are you coping with living in the Ripper’s world?”

Will buries his face in his hands, “I can’t see him. There are times when I can _feel_ him, but then I lose it. It’s like I’m chasing him through a funhouse, all the glimpses that I catch are distorted reflections, then in a moment he’s gone again.”

“Is that what truly troubles you?”

The younger man huff’s a sigh, “Someday I’m going to figure out how you do that.”

“I have no doubt that someday you will,” Hannibal says with a smile, “in the meantime, are your dreams what you find distressing?”

He flounders, “My dreams are always distressing.”

It’s a safe comment because it’s entirely true. The dream was offensive on many levels, and Hannibal is the last person on earth that he wants to drive away. Doctor Lecter isn’t like most men; all the same, he is still capable of being offended. Will has spotted it occasionally, the other man’s eyes will shutter down, subtly going cold.

“My dear Will,” Hannibal assures, “nothing you could ever say, or do, would cause me offence.”

Feeling a little taken aback by the ease in which his thoughts are being perceived, he considers telling Hannibal about the dream, but shies away at the last second, “The other night, when we were talking about the Ripper, I noticed something.”

Doctor Lecter stands, straightening his suit as he walks over to the table that holds a few of his loose sketches and the ever-present scalpels that he uses as sharpeners, “I recall the conversation.”

Inhaling deeply through his nose and with his eyes firmly anchored to a point over the doctor’s shoulder, Will lets the words slip out before they can get caught in his throat, “It was something you said that I didn’t recognize until later.”

The doctor shifts, stroking a finger along the thin blade that rests on at the flat surface, “Oh?”

“Actually it wasn’t quite what you said, so much as the _way_ that you said it.”

Hannibal turns towards him slightly, “What did you see?”

Pushing himself back into the cushions, Will wishes fervently that the chair could swallow him up as he clears his throat loudly, “When you were talking about words. You didn’t seem quite like yourself…they were your words …but they _weren’t_ yours…I’ve seen you do it before but it never really clicked until then.”

He grimaces after the contradictory statement leaves his mouth, “I’m sorry, I know that doesn’t make any sense. It’s just a feeling.”

But Hannibal doesn’t seem to take offense. Instead, he smiles and strolls back to his chair as if he has just been complimented, “The abstract can be difficult to define.”

“Yes it can,” Will confirms thickly, thinking of all the times he’s been unable to explain to people how he know what he knows at a crime scene, “but you know what I’m talking about?”

“I do,” the doctor tells him as he reclines, “you know better than most that we all have the tendency to acquire traits or affectations from others, particularly those that we are close to, and I am certainly no different.”

“You’re right. Though, it’s hard to imagine you being young enough to pick things up from others.”

“It’s an ongoing process, one that doesn’t end with childhood,” Hannibal confirms lightly, “however, I must admit that until you mentioned it I hadn’t realized how many traits I had picked up from my sister in our youth. I was quite apt to notice behaviors that she adapted from me; clearly, I wasn’t quite as skilled at discerning the reverse.”

Will blinks in surprise; it’s a blatant reminder to him that there is a great deal about Doctor Lecter that he doesn’t know, “I’d no idea that you have a sister.”

Hannibal tilts his head and pauses for a moment, as if he is waiting for something. Suddenly the details of what the doctor has said strike him.

‘Was’ and ‘Had’.

Past tense.

The color drains from Will’s face and he ducks his head to avoid looking at the older man, “I’m sorry.”

“You have nothing to apologize for,” Hannibal interjects, “you were not to know. I speak of her very rarely, though she is often in my thoughts.”

“Would you prefer not to talk about it?” Will asks, risking a glance at Hannibal, unable to help the spike of curiosity he feels.

Doctor Lecter’s eyes crinkle as his lips twitch, “I don’t mind speaking of Mischa with a friend.”

There’s a surge of warmth in Will’s chest at the endearment, blocking out the cynical part of his mind that points out how pathetic his near Pavlovian response to any kind of affection is. He blurts out a question to help cover the embarrassingly obvious pleasure that he’s feeling, “Was she older or younger than you?”

“Younger, by fourteen months.”

“Wow. Any sibling rivalry?”

Hannibal chuckles, “There were a few ripples in the pond during our earliest years, but by the time that she was three we had actually become quite close.”

“Did…” Will falters, “did she die with your parents? I know you said that they died when you were young.”

“No,” Hannibal’s voice is remote, “she died when she was fifteen.”

So young. All Will can think about is that she was younger than Abigail is now, younger than any of the victims that Garrett Jacob Hobbs had claimed. He mentally distances himself from the thought of Hobbs; not wanting to conjure the dead man while he’s thinking about Hannibal’s sister, much less about Abigail. Instead, he forces himself to focus, “What was she like?”

“Mischa was clever and passionate, fond of building forts, much in the same way that you are, Will. She didn’t like for people to see her vulnerabilities.”

“But you did,” Will says with certainty.

“She surprised me from time to time,” Hannibal admits, “but I would rather say that she eventually trusted me enough to let me see past her barriers.”

“Eventually?”

“My sister kept people at a distance because of her perception of herself. She thought that there was something in her that would innately repulse people.”

“Even you?” Will asks, the fine hair on his neck raising, there is a comparable sympathy he can feel with the girl.

“Myself especially,” Doctor Lecter affirms, “people are often afraid to open up to those they care deeply about, for fear of driving them away. It’s a particularly prevalent mindset among orphans.”

“What did she think was so bad that it would drive you away?”

“As I said, she was quite passionate. At its most basic level, passion is defined as strong and barely controllable emotion. Mischa could be passionately loving, passionately angry, and even passionately violent at times.”

“Did she ever _hurt_ you?”

“No, nor did she hurt anyone else,” Hannibal says firmly, “but the combination of the death of our parents and her own nature left her with a great deal of anger.”

Will nods unconsciously, already feeling the tugs of emotion that Mischa Lecter had experienced in her short life, “What did you do?”

“One day I confronted her,” the doctor tells him, “and I told her the truth.”

“Which was?”

“That nothing about her repulsed me,” Hannibal crosses one leg over the other, “and that she didn’t need to change or hide anything about herself in order to retain my love.”

He tells himself that the sudden knocking against his ribs is his empathy reaching out towards Hannibal’s sister, an echo of what she would have felt when she heard her brother make such a statement. It certainly couldn’t be envy that makes Will gasp out his next question, “Didn’t you want her to get better?”

“Of course,” Doctor Lecter confirms, “but it was also very important for her to understand that if she never healed, or her maladies worsened, that she would always be dear to me.”

“Even if she _did_ hurt someone?”

“Even then.”

A knot forms in Will’s chest, “Seems intense.”

“I feel I’ve given you the wrong impression of Mischa,” Hannibal comments with a lighter tone, “that was only one facet of her, my sister could also be quite witty, and she wasn’t afraid to laugh at me.”

“That was brave of her,” Will chortles.

“She was brave,” Hannibal says contemplatively, “she faced her life and her death with more strength than most people ever display.”

Working past the lump in his throat, Will whispers, “How did she die?”

Hannibal gazes at him for so long that he’s afraid that he _has_ offended the doctor this time.

“I shouldn’t have asked …”

“You mistake me,” Hannibal interjects, “I was contemplating weather you would want to know. You deal with a great amount of trauma and horror working for Jack Crawford. I hesitate to add another ghost to the ones that already haunt you.”

Will takes a deep breath to steady himself because there is truth in Hannibal’s words. There are some days when he honestly thinks that he can’t stand to have a gruesome death in his head. Times when he gets the call from Jack to look at a crime scene and he wants to pitifully beg: _No more_.

Except this isn’t Jack, this is Hannibal. His friend, the closest one he has, and probably the only one to see him for what he is and what he is not.

Doctor Lecter is a very contained person, hard to get a read on (something Will is nothing but grateful for). Still, importance that the subject holds for the man is obvious, and Will finds that he cares about his friend enough to shoulder the horror, “Tell me.”

Hannibal leans back with a genuine smile on his face, “As you wish.”

______________

When Will goes home that night, the air around him feels as if it is filled with a fine mist of blood: a macabre imitation of dust motes streaming in the sunlight. Every time he takes a breath he imagines the dark stains filling his lungs, the image is so strong that he can almost taste the copper on the back of his tongue. More carnage for the spectral stag to feed upon in his nightmares.

In spite of this, there is some portion of Will that feels remarkably _still_.

After all the insinuations that Jack and Alana have made about his attachment to Abigail, the almost paternal affection that he has for her, it’s heartening to see that Hannibal is (like himself) trying to grasp for that missing connection in his life.

He supposes that he should be concerned, considering that the man is his therapist, but on a foundational level he is strangely reassured. Doctor Lecter always appears so controlled and untouchable. It’s something that Will desperately envies in so many ways. If Jack is bedrock then Hannibal is diamond edges.

Will finds comfort in the realization that Hannibal has his own issues to work through, and as shameful as it is, he’s happy to now be closer to the man who calls him a friend.

_____________

He should have remembered that comfort is ephemeral, and connection is elusive to those who don’t deserve it.

_____________

Staring at the bricks that make up the walls of his small cell, Will recalls his thoughts and feelings of this conversation with alacrity. Going over every detail.

He makes a noise that is both broken and anguished.

Then he doesn’t make any sound at all.

There are images in his mind, and they overpower all, shining clearer, brighter than anything outside.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry this post is a little late today guys but I have literally just been blown away by the season premiere and as such have spent the past few hours unapologetically fangirling. 
> 
> Needless to say, anything from this point on is strictly in the bounds of AU for cannon divergence. Though I may add in a few things from this season, if I can. 
> 
> Cheers!


	11. Chapter 11

'In life, love gnawed my skin

To this white bone;

What love did then, love does now:

Gnaws me through.'

 

Sylvia Plath- Dialogue Between Ghost and Priest

_____________________

 

_The real world has faded to a dull hum. Will is only faintly aware of it; like the moon it is distant, cold, and unreachable._

_People come and go, tests are preformed, but they are like weak flickering beams seen though a distant skylight, serving only to cast sinister shadows along the tangled and snarled foliage of his thoughts. This is a place where the monsters cannot be escaped from. They spring up from inside him like blood seeping out of a wound._

_Will is caught in the labyrinth of his own mind and the beast chases after him on two stealthy legs, a monster out of legend. Sometimes it gets close enough for Will to gaze at its face; folding and unfolding, it becomes both more and less human with every glimpse._

_Every time he catches sight of it, Will pushes himself deeper and deeper into the haunted corridors. Garrett Jacob Hobbs sits perched in rafters and quiet corners, smiling his ghastly smile, as if he had always known that Graham would end up here._

_The dead man’s expression silently asks why he doesn’t just give in, and the thought is painfully tempting, but Will knows that if he surrenders that his fate won’t simply be death. No, he will be consumed. Transformed. His shroud of his humanity will be devoured until only the monstrous things that live under his skin remain._

_He doesn’t know how long he runs like a frightened rabbit before the hungry jaws of a predator, only that all at once there is nowhere left to run, the wolf is at the door and all the exits have been locked._

_There is a distant thumping noise. Will can’t tell if it’s the creature’s footsteps or the hammering of his heart._

_*thud*_

_Tar covered feet slither forward._

_*thud*_

_There’s a shout above him, and for a moment he thinks that it’s Abigail. A part of him selfishly wants to see her, even though he knows that this is the last place he should wish her to be._

_*thud*_

_Suddenly there is a terrific crash; Will feels his entire body jerk forward and he closes his eyes in a last attempt to avoid the inevitable._

_empty_

_gaping chasm_

_oblivion_

_paralyzing nothingness_

_screaming silence_

_nothing there_

A dull rattling, forces him to open his lids.

Will dimly realizes that the thumping that he heard was coming from the room next to him. No, not the room, the _cell_. There is a terrible moment when he remembers that he has been incarcerated and the sounds that he is hearing are coming from inside a prison.

“Can you hear me?” The voice is (surprisingly) feminine and just a little frantic.

There is no response from the guards that Will knows must be lurking somewhere, the lack of reaction triggers a frustrated growl, “I know that you can hear me.”

This statement tugs an involuntary noise out of Will, but his voice is rough and uneven from disuse, it comes out barely higher than a whisper. It’s still enough to provoke a startled gasp out of his neighbor.

He tries again, making sure to clear his throat before he speaks, “I hear you.”

A long pause.

Then, “I was beginning to wonder if you were still alive in there.”

“So was I,” he mutters, trying to shut out the fragments of his dream that reflect at him like coins in a deep, shrouded well, “Where am I?”

“You don’t know where you are?”

“Not jail,” he observes nervously, “it looks different”.

“Not jail,” she confirms, “you don’t remember your trial?”

“I didn’t have a trial.”

She’s skeptical, “If you didn’t, then you would still be in holding in a jail cell.”

The idea that he’s missing weeks, if not months, of time leaves him with a bubble of barely contained hysteria. Panic creeps up Will’s throat. “Do you know how long I was…” _Lost, unresponsive, hallucinating?_ The last concrete memory he has is of confronting Doctor Lecter from his jail cell.

“You arrived here a little after I did,” she says, “at first, I heard pacing, and sometimes the taps would run. It took a while for anyone to recognize that you… weren’t there. I think it’s been around three weeks or so.”

“Where is here?”

“Baltimore State Hospital,” she doesn’t tack on the rest of the title, ‘For the Criminally Insane’, there’s no need. The sights, the sounds, the strangeness, they all drench him with a sudden wave of cold perception that leaves him shivering in its wake.

Will crosses his arms tightly against his chest and lets out a shaky exhale.

“There have been quite a few people to see you,” she continues undaunted by his silence.

“Touching,” he snaps with indignation, momentarily glad to have anger to supersede the fear. Though, the feeling is quickly diminished when he shamefacedly realizes that he’s leaning closer to the wall they share, straining to hear what passed while he wandered the hallways in his mind.

“A woman with dark hair, very pretty, she seemed sad.”

He works past a lump in his throat, “Alana.”

“There was an older man too.”

Will tenses.

“He looked like a cop. I don’t think he knew what he was doing here, he only stayed for a few minutes, and he didn’t say anything.”

“Jack,” the name comes out as a simultaneous ache and relief.

The girl, who seems to sense his turbulent emotions, inquires conversationally, “ _Is_ he a cop?”

“He’s in the FBI.”

“Investigating your case?”

His reply resounds strangely in the empty air of the hallway that the wing of cells share, “He is- or was- my boss.”

She gives a poorly choked off gale of laughter. When she finally recovers enough to speak, she is incredulous, “You work for the FBI? How on earth did you end up here?”

“It’s a long story.”

“You’ve got something better to do?”

The memories are bitter, like blood on his tongue, “I don’t even know your name.”

If she thinks it’s a pathetic – not to mention transparent- attempt to change the subject, she doesn’t comment on it. A kindness that he’s grateful for as he tries to listen to her answer which is being muffled by frantic cries at the end of the hall. Another prisoner in the grasp of a dream.

“Lydia?”

“And your name is Will. Some of your visitors said so,” she informs him briskly before repeating her original question, “Why are you here?”

Closing his eyes, he tries to drown out the image of Hannibal’s exultant smile, “I’d prefer not to talk about it.”

Another pause, this time shorter, “Alright.”

____________________________

Silence stretches between them for days. Loathe as he is to admit it, there’s something comforting about hearing the sounds of rustling fabric, creaking springs, and the occasional deep breath.

It doesn’t drive away the nightmares - nothing does that - but it does help to remind him that they _are_ nightmares and not reality.

Sometimes.

____________________________

The staff makes their perfunctory visits: food delivered three times a day, bed check in the morning, bed check at night, and a colorful allotment of pills to be ingested sometime after meals. Every few days he gets dragged off to a freezing shower.

There had been a little bustle at first, when they had finally realized that Will was cognizant again, something quickly demonstrated when he (not without cause) had objected strenuously to the medication.

“I’m not going to take anything that Chilton prescribed,” he told the orderly with indignant resolution, bracing himself for a fight with the man if it came to it. He’d had quite enough of psychiatrists and their machinations to last ten lifetimes, and even if it’s a battle he knew that he couldn’t win, he would fight tooth and nail to keep Chilton from pinioning him like butterfly for further study.

The orderly – whose tag read ‘Barney’- had blinked rapidly but responded respectfully, “Mr. Graham, you’ve been taking your medication without complaint for over three weeks now.”

God knew what had been pumped into him as his body acted in docile detachment from his mind. Unprovoked, a snippet of a conversation he’d had with Hannibal came back to him, “ _Your experience may have overwhelmed ordinary functions that give you a sense of control.”_ The memory made him wince.

Barney opened the cell door with a set of keys attached to his waist, a second orderly whose nametag Will couldn’t see - not without his glasses - stood ready. There had been no struggle or restraints, rather Barney had simply walked in and placed the medication on the edge of the sink, “If it helps, this medication has been issued by your doctor- your medical doctor, that is - to treat your encephalitis.”

Gritting his teeth in uncertainty, Will stared at the paper container with suspicion, not trusting himself enough to bank on Barney the Orderly, in spite of his glaring sincerity.

Seeming to sense the younger man’s hesitation, Barney took a few pacifying steps backward, “Doctor Chilton wouldn’t risk combining the medications,” he stopped for a moment, as if he was uncertain that he should continue, but was compelled by innate honesty to do so, “he can’t get anything published credibly if there are conflicting pharmaceutical regiments at work, not to mention the medical doctors who still require progress reports about your condition.”

As disgusted as Will was, there was also an accompanying rush of relief, because the action is so like Chilton that he knew that he could trust the information. It allows him to swallow the pills with only a modicum of apprehension. Barney had the grace to act as if Will had a choice all along, which he appreciates, if only for the appearance of self-control it allows him to cling to.

After the two orderlies left, Lydia spoke up, “I hope you know that I hold you to a distinct advantage over myself.”

“How?”

“I have no idea what’s being done to me,” she tells him in misery, “but it makes it seem like my mind is being pulled in two directions. Everything is so distant.”

The drugs that they have her on must be extremely powerful, it sends a twist of anticipatory dread through him, one which he valiantly tries to ignore, “Sometimes distance can be a good thing,”

“Not this kind,” she whispers with genuine fear, “it makes me feel like I’m _disappearing_.”

Is that why she had been calling out when he had first woken out of his fugue? Will can sympathize, he knows exactly what it’s like to live with the unnerving sensation that you are slipping away from yourself, he asks gently, “Your doctors?”

“Funny thing,” Lydia comments, “I haven’t talked to anyone since I arrived. Well not doctors anyway, I’ve had a couple of interesting conversations with a few inmates, though.”

This too has Chilton’s sticky fingerprints all over it, because he’s fairly certain (though he’s never looked very closely at the inner workings of asylums, the subject always made him feel too uncomfortable) that women aren’t supposed to be housed near men, much less in the same wing with them. His reply had been flat and dry, “Funny.”

___________________

“Je ne veux pas mourir toute seule.”

Will doesn’t know if she’s awake or asleep as the words are painfully ripped from her throat, he doesn’t ask what they mean.

___________________

Will had never considered that sitting in a six by eight foot cell all day would make the normal rhythm of the day defunct. Most people logically arrange their time by the passage of day and night, but without any occupation to tax him, his hours become a jumble. Other than the deliveries of food, medication, and the turning on and off of the lights on the wing, there is little change.

One night, when he’s been awake for half the night and he’s been left alone with his thoughts for so long that he’s afraid to look into the dark corners of his cell, he hazards a question, half hoping that she’ll be too deeply asleep to hear it, “Did anyone else come to visit me? While I wasn’t myself?”

“You sound like you have a particular someone in mind,” she answers, apparently as unable to sleep as he has been.

When he doesn’t respond, Lydia sighs, “There were a couple of medical doctors, when you were first brought in, but I assume that you don’t care about them.”

“No.”

“Well then,” she went on, “that just leaves the Reader.”

“ _Who_?”

“I didn’t hear anyone use his name,” Lydia informs him, “he used to come in all the time and read to you. Now that I think of it, he was the first person to realize that there was something wrong with the way you were acting.”

His voice becomes inscrutable, “What did he look like?”

“Tall, well dressed, accented,” she elaborates, “he wasn’t exactly handsome, but he was very striking.”

Will looks at the empty hallway outside of his confinement with suspicion, the area takes on a sinister quality and he thinks to himself with certainty, “ _Right there. He sat right there_.”

“He read to me?”

Lydia hums in agreement, “Laurence Sterne. He chose my favorite of Sterne’s books, actually.”

“The whole book?” Exactly how many times has Hannibal visited him?

“There were a few passages that he seemed to favor over others,” Lydia recounts, pausing when someone down the hall gives a muffled scream. Thankfully, the other inmates don’t wake.

“I’m not sure if I want to know what he was saying to me,” both the words on the pages and the implication behind those words frighten him. Hannibal is brilliant in laying out his traps, leaving riddles to solve like a trail of breadcrumbs, every one tailored to entice the individual trying to decipher them.

She chides him lightly, “Yes you do. That’s why you asked.”

“I suppose so.”

His eyes flutter closed as he listens to Lydia’s voice.

_“I saw a starling hung in a little cage. —“I can’t get out —I can’t get out,” said the starling._

_I stood looking at the bird: and to every person who came through the passage it ran fluttering to the side towards which they approach’d it, with the same lamentation of its captivity. —“I can’t get out,” said the starling. —God help thee! said I, but I’ll let thee out, cost what it will; so I turn’d about the cage to get to the door; it was twisted and double twisted so fast with wire, there was no getting it open without pulling the cage to pieces. —I took both hands to it._

_The bird flew to the place where I was attempting his deliverance, and thrusting his head through the trellis, press’d his breast against it, as if impatient. —I fear, poor creature! said I, I cannot set thee at liberty. —“No,” said the starling —“I can’t get out —I can’t get out”._

_____________________

Before he falls asleep, he thinks about the passage.

He has a flash of Alana reading over an unconscious Abigail in her hospital bed the first time the two of them had ever been alone together. The memory superimposes upon this one, now tainted by association.

_____________________

_That night he dreams of a gilded cage._

_He pulls and twists the bars until his hands are flecked with red, and just when he thinks that the golden steel will never give way, it does. When he looks inside the cage he is astonished to note that there is nothing inside of it._

_Hannibal comes to stand beside him. Will knows he should shout angry accusations, that he should leave and never come back, but he doesn’t. He only looks at the man for a long time before saying in confusion, “It’s empty.”_

_“Of course it is,” Hannibal bends down to pick up some of the fallen gold, “you made the cage. You know the truth of it.”_

_“What truth is that?”_

_Lecter leans in close to his ear, “That it can only cage those that let themselves be caged.”_

_“I wasn’t in the cage.”_

_“You were,” the older man says as he effortlessly curves the metal in his hands, “only you’ve just realized it.”_

_Will looks down to see that Hannibal has created a golden crown which he places on Will’s head, piercing his flesh. Gently, he raises a knuckle to catch the blood as it streams down his face and tastes the stolen sustenance._

_Overhead a bird screams as it dives towards the earth. It sounds like the cry of a child._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hi all! So I hope this chapter isn't too out of left-field for you all. If you have any confusion about any new characters...well, all I can say is that all will be revealed in good time. ;) As always, thank you for all the lovely reviews. 
> 
> I also wanted to let you know that I won't be posting next week. My lovely Beta is going to Supernatural Con (lucky girl!). But I promise that you will have something to read as soon as she gets back....and of course, you will have new episodes which are far more entertaining!


	12. Chapter 12

Is it impossible for you to let something go,

And have it go whole?

Must you stamp each piece purple,

Must you kill what you can?

 

Sylvia Plath – A Birthday Present

 

___________________________

 

 

He and Lydia aren’t exactly friends, but they do end up speaking to each other a lot. It just sort of happens because Hobbs still hovers on the edges of his consciousness, and Will talks to help drive the thoughts of him away. Also, there really isn’t anything else to _do_.

Their rapport is solid, something real that allows him to breathe a little easier.

He tells himself that it’s nothing like Hannibal, he couldn’t stand it if it was anything like the talks he had with Hannibal.

As he shivers in his cell -the air has gradually become unbearably cold, though Barney swears up and down that temperature in the wing hasn’t been altered- he lies still and listens to everything that her silence tells him. In spite of the fact that he has never seen her face, he has nonetheless had ample time to observe her. Pieces of her trickle out like an open wound, no matter the pains she takes to bind them.

He hadn’t been able to see the Ripper’s face, and now that he thinks of it, he hadn’t seen Hannibal’s either.

Even during that last terrible night in the Hobbs’ home with Abigail’s blood once again coating the walls, and later in the prison, when Hannibal had come to glory in his triumph. _Even then_ there was something that the older man was holding back, something that Will couldn’t see.

Garrett Jacob Hobbs whispers his last words tauntingly, “See.”                                                             

More distantly, “ _It wasn’t just us! It was…”_ the words are dim.

_“See…”_

_____________________________

A loud buzzer goes off down the hall; the signal is followed by a series of mechanical clanks, heralding a visitor.

It’s late. Half of the staff has gone home for the night, which means that this visitation is an emergency or something off the books. Or both.

Doctor Chilton steps into view.

Will takes in a deep breath in an attempt to remain calm, wondering fleetingly if he wouldn’t have been better off with Doctor Lecter as his psychiatrist, even with all that he now knows about the man. Hannibal was a great many things, but he could never be accused of being inept. The same could not be said for the doctor now facing him.

“I’ve been informed that you have finally come out of your fugue state,” Chilton begins, with the smug authority of someone who reigns absolute supreme in his surroundings.

“You didn’t come here in the middle of the night just to tell me that.”

The Doctor’s eyes narrow at Will’s response, “Come now Mr. Graham, there’s a great deal that we can learn from your psychoses.”

The words cause a hard knot forms in his stomach.

A panic attack is hovering at the edges of Will’s mind, slowly squeezing around him with the strength of a vice. He desperately tries to focus on something –anything- that can keep it at bay, but the tiny tremors in his muscles have already begun.

Over the roaring in his ears he distantly hears Lydia inquire in mock innocence, “Learn? You mean like you _learned_ a lot from Abel Gideon?”

The vice loosens a little.

A traitorous part of his brain whispers the litany: _My name is Will Graham, I’m in Baltimore, and it’s the middle of the night._

He hates the comfort that the repetition brings.

Though Chilton’s brow furrows, he presses on in his inquest, seemingly unperturbed, “Please try to be as descriptive as possible.”

The girl gives a snort of laughter, “While we’re sharing Frederick, why don’t you tell us what it felt like to be disemboweled? We’re all very curious.”

Will almost chokes at her audacity as he flings himself back against the wall, pressing his hands behind his back, deliberately turning his face up towards the ceiling.

Chilton, annoyed that this confrontation isn’t going the way that he originally planned, raises his voice to regain the other man’s attention, “The physicians have got a handle on your encephalitis, and they’ve cleared me to get started on your psychological treatment. Given the unique nature of your mind, I will have to come up with some equally unique drug and therapy treatments.”

Will clenches his fists for a long moment, fighting back a surge of black rage that swells in his chest, a half-dozen brutal methods of death flit behind his closed eyes, “Whatever you’re hoping to get from me. You won’t find it.”

“I suppose time will tell, Mr. Graham,” Chilton his tone almost snide, “in any case, you are correct about my reasons for being here at such an inconvenient hour, you have a visitor.”

As the doctor walks away, Will almost laughs.

Everyone wants a piece of him, and there’s not nearly enough to go around. There was little enough to begin with.

___________________

“You must be joking.”

Jack hasn’t lost the stern look that he always wears, if anything his face has been carved into sterner lines since the last time that Will saw him, only a faint trace of weariness around his eyes hint that anything is amiss.

“Does it seem like I’m joking, Will?”

Their eyes locked for a long moment, neither giving way. There is a thick file tucked under Jack’s left arm, Will doesn’t have to be a genius to figure out what it contains, still he feels a certain amount of justified incredulity about what he knows Jack is going to ask of him.

“If my consulting on cases was bending the rules before, then doing it now must be violating more codes than I can think of,” he states pointblank, “there’s no way you can rationalize it.”

He can see from Jacks expression that he’s preparing to do just that, arranging all the arguments, devising all the validations.

Will wonders idly if anyone was convinced by Jack’s reasoning.

Not that it really matters; he already knows what his answer is going to be. This is his battle, one which he is going to have to fight on his own. But this time he’s going to be smart about it.

“I never meant for you to end up here,” Jack quietly mutters, “in Chilton’s asylum. He petitioned the court, said that your unique disorders warranted you being housed under his supervision through the end of the trial. I tried to oppose it, but the judge decided in Chilton’s favor.”

With a sudden cold rush, Will feels as though every ounce of rage, every ounce of betrayal is forcing steel up his spine and into his jaw.

“You didn’t mean to,” he says flatly.

“Will—”

“Of course you didn’t mean to. No one ever means to. You didn’t mean to throw all those cases at me, Alana didn’t mean for things to get so far, Abigail didn’t mean to lie to me. Yet somehow in spite of all your good intentions that’s exactly what happened. That’s just how it goes.”

The older man takes a surprised step backwards when he hears the venom in Will’s voice before conceding, “You have every right to refuse, and if you do, I swear I won’t bother you with this ever again.”

“You’re lying,” Will hisses out savagely.

“I would never…”

“Yes, you would.”

Jack continues tiredly, “…however, if you cooperate in this, it will go a long way in your favor during the trial.”

“That’s not what I want.”

“I already have to do an investigation into Doctor Lecter,” Jack interrupts sounding affronted, “you really think I’m going to just ignore an accusation because of who it came from? No matter how credible or baseless we investigate all leads. It’s our _job_.”

Will has the good sense to act subdued when he responds, “Okay. I know that, I really do, but what I want from you is the most thorough scrutiny you can manage. Not just a quick check. Scrape to the bottom of the barrel, if I’m wrong than you can sleep easier at night.”

He doesn’t bother to mention what would happen if he was right. Both, for their own individual reasons, think that finding evidence of Lecter’s guilt is impossible: Jack because he doesn’t consider the man to be guilty of anything and Will because he knows Hannibal is far too good to leave any hard evidence behind.

“What else?” Jack asks, after several moments of tapping the rough concrete with his foot.

“Beverly does the investigation.”

“And?”

“Everything you come across on him,” Will braces himself, “I need to see it all.”

“ _Absolutely not_ , it would be a breach of…”

“Of what, Jack?” Exasperation is crawling into his timbre, “The rules? Ethics? Asking for a consult from someone awaiting trial for murder seems like a damn big breach of both.”

He can practically hear the scraping of enamel as Jack grinds his teeth. Eventually, practicality wins out and with a quick but firm nod of assent Jack holds out the file to Will.

“It’s the –”

“The Ripper,” Will finishes for him, “I know.”

No one else could make Jack desperate enough to drive out to an insane asylum in the middle of the night to ask for his help.

Will waits, listening for the sound of the grid to slam closed, signaling Jack’s departure. When he hears it, he takes in a deep breath he didn’t know that he was holding.

Time.

He needs to play for time.

If there’s anything he’s knows, it’s that Hannibal isn’t compulsory about his killing. Killing is something that he has under total control, which is why he’ll never be caught that way; it isn’t a weakness for the man. No, Hannibal’s real (and at the moment, only) disadvantage is his curiosity.

Why else would he take Jack up on the consultation offer? Or insinuate himself into so many other investigations? He can’t help but to interfere in situations, even when doing so is not in his best interests.

With Will incarcerated, Hannibal must be so _bored_.

_______________________________

Jack leaves the asylum with the impression that he’s just traded one set of worries for another.

It’s not an unfamiliar feeling for a man in his line of work. Over the years, he’s interrogated enough serial killers to fill a thousand pages of a book no sane person would ever want to read. He knows about modus operandi and signatures. He can tell you what varies and what doesn’t.

Compartmentalization is something that doesn’t vary.

When he had just started out in the Violent Crimes division he had interviewed a man who likened the balancing act his life had required (before his capture) to that of a ship under constant siege: every aspect of his life was separated and sealed, if one part of the hull was compromised than the rest of the hull remained intact. He had said that his killings were at the heart of the ship, shut away in a vault that would hold fast even after the ship sank.

While this conversation initially brings to mind the memory of Will obsessively bent over the boat motors in his home, the irony isn’t completely lost on Jack that the comparison far better fits his own life than it does the chaos that is Will Graham’s existence.

The Ripper, Miriam, Bella’s illness, and now Will. They have all become well placed missiles that are trying to capsize him and no matter how quickly he bails out the water there is always another leak to stopper.

He knows that by providing Will with the information of the investigation into Doctor Lecter he will be feeding into Graham’s psychoses. Adding fuel to the fire that he recognizes he has helped start in the first place. Jack hesitates, not sure if he should actually allow this or run back inside, grab the file out of Will’s hands, and give him time to heal ( _How much? How much time can possibly make this right_?).

Jack stops himself, and instead thinks about the other people who need Will’s expertise, the people who have been killed by the Ripper.

His decision is swift as he digs his phone out of his pocket impatiently and dials, “Beverly, I’ve got a job for you – the investigation on Doctor Lecter – Will wants you to handle it personally and so do I. Yes. And Beverly? – I want you to dig deep, don’t stop till you hit rock bottom. Prurnell and the Oversight Committee are going to be gunning for us and we don’t want to leave any stones unturned…Alright, I’ll be there as soon as I can.”

The investigation into Doctor Lecter is going to be a futile one.

But if can motivate Will, than maybe it will allow something to be salvaged from this disaster.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hey guys! My beta just got back from her Con and was kind enough to get this to me. Sorry that it's a little later than usual. 
> 
> Also someone was asking me about the chapter lengths and how they seem to vary...all I can say is that I end chapters when they seem like they need to end. As a result there is a little bit of disparity in size between chapters. Hopefully it doesn't displease anyone too much. 
> 
> Anyway, I can't wait to see you all this weekend!


	13. Chapter 13

He, hunger-strung, hard to slake,

So fitted is for my black luck

(With heat such as no man could have and yet keep kind)

That all merit's in being meat.

 

Sylvia Plath – The Glutton

_________________

The event is laid out before him in precise terms and crisp photographs, which is what case files are designed to do: describe a crime scene down to the minute details. The data is there, but it isn’t telling him what he needs to know, and trying to get a sense of things just from the paperwork, no matter how meticulously documented, is an exercise in frustration. Because now there are layers of concrete and a loss of dimension to obscure the Ripper even further from his vision.

Will shivers and rubs his hands briskly over his arms to try and bring some warmth back into them before going over the facts again, muttering them to himself, as he sorts the stacks of sheets into a semi-circle around his kneeling form.

A sudden laugh from outside his cell scares the hell out of him, “You know you really ought to invest in a Bluetooth. Then people won’t think you’re talking to yourself.”

Letting out a tense breath, he retorts will no small amount of self-effacement, “I _am_ talking to myself.”

“That’s not going to speak in your favor,” Lydia chides him lightly, “not in this place.”

“I don’t think anything is going to be speaking in my favor here.”

She hesitates for a moment, “Why do you do it then?”

The question makes him pause. He knows that she isn’t asking him why he chose to take this particular case. She’s asking why he chose to take _any_ of them. How does he begin to explain? How can he make someone else understand what has become incomprehensible to himself? Will heaves a sigh and considers the numerous reasons he has told himself over the past year.

After running his hands through his hair, he swallows hard and tells her, “Because I can’t stop.”

Behind his closed eyes the pendulum swings.

____________________

_John Repton lies dead in his family home, nestled in the very heart of the sprawling house, a place that he should have been safest, where generations of his family have lived and found shelter._

_The room itself is beautiful and strange, as the décor in wealthy homes tends to be, perfectly suited to the Ripper’s purpose. The extravagant draperies, the upholsteries, the bedding, and even the carpet underfoot are all styled in a deep shade of red. It’s decadent and probably meant to be seductive. It’s easy to imagine a score of lovers welcoming each other with open arms as they are swallowed by the bloody hues._

_Now one of them has been embraced by death, and it’s almost funny. He knows without a doubt that the Ripper laughed at the double meaning. Death has a certain innate facility to shove the sarcastic truth of a person’s existence in their face._

_The blood and gore are disguised by the décor to such a degree that the figure of Repton, so pale from blood loss and lividity, predominates the room like a ghost. He’s beautiful in death, with his dark hair and angular features._

_Except for the one glaring defect._

_Repton’s left arm and shoulder have been expertly severed. Without any clothing to disguise the areas of mutilation, he brings to mind the image of those marble statues that you would find in a museum, the kind that are unearthed with appendages missing._

_John hadn’t been killed here. No, the privacy needed to dislocate Repton’s shoulder and then sever it while the man was still alive is not available here. Rather, the Ripper had found the hedonism of the location irresistible._

_The final touch of irony had been taking the man’s heart._

________________________________

“Dinner!”

Will is dragged back to reality by a metallic scraping against the slot in his cell. An impatient guard barks out, “Graham, are you going to eat this or not?”

Dazedly reaching for the food tray, hunger gnaws at his insides. Except, as he stares at the mashed potatoes and meatloaf, the sight of it makes him feel ill.

His appetite doesn’t dissipate, though. If anything, it increases, and Will convinces himself that it’s the unattractive nature of the asylum’s food that makes him hesitate. Taking a deep breath he picks up the plastic cutleries and determinedly saws at a piece of meat.

It barely passes his lips before his stomach turns.

The memory of what happened during that last fugue before his incarceration comes screaming back into his consciousness and a small voice whispers into his ear, “ _If you ate me would I always be a part of you?_ ”

The voice belongs to Abigail.

___________________

Beverly walks down the halls of the BAU with a confidence in the click of her heels that she doesn’t quite feel. Nevertheless, she sweeps forth with her head held high, her face molded into a smile as inscrutable as a Botticelli angel. Those who pass her would never guess that she had just spent the past three hours being grilled by an Oversight Committee.

Everything having to do with Will Graham has been gone over with a microscope. Every memo, every reference, every conversation that Bev has ever had with him has been dissected until her head throbbed painfully.

A ball of disquiet roils within her because a part of Bev is so weary of the uncertainty that she’s been carrying around about Will, that she almost wishes that Prurnell can find the evidence she needs so that the situation can be over.

Immediately, the image of Will’s stricken face on the day of his arrest comes to mind, making her feel inordinately guilty for such thoughts.

As she takes the stairs down to the lab, she’s greeted by halls that are sterile white and accented with highly polished steel. Normally, it’s a comforting sight. The surroundings have become a second home to her after all her years of working for the Bureau. Now, though, every turn of her head throws her own distorted image back at her and each step she takes leaves her feeling more uncertain than the last.

When she finally reaches her area of the lab, there is paperwork to be filled out - a tiny part of her mentally gripes at Prurnell for the extra red tape that has been recently implemented- and she can’t shake the numbness from her fingers as they sign in all the appropriate places.

When she’s finally allowed to access her workstation, she logs into the computer and stares at the generic desktop. There are a million things that she could be doing at the moment. Dozens of ways to start an investigation into Doctor Lecter are available at her fingertips. So why is she hesitating?

She huffs in frustration as the cursor blinks at her mockingly.

Zeller putters around at the other end of the lab, “Hey, did you finish getting the Repton scene processed?”

He starts in surprise, “Yeah, everything’s been processed.”

“Did you remember to upload the new data onto the VICAP profile of the Ripper?”

“Signed, sealed, and delivered.”

Bev groans, even now with Jack’s orders looming over her head, she’s looking for a way to avoid doing what she has to do. Maybe she’s even putting more effort into it, like she’s giving some higher power a chance to take it back.

“I take it the meeting didn’t go well?” Zeller asks, pulling up a stool as he takes a seat next to her.

“Let’s just say that I now know what an ant under a magnifying glass feels like,” she informs him tiredly.

Brian, who has spent the past few weeks with a worried look on his face, like he’s waiting for the sky to come crashing down around his ears, chances a smile and waits for her to continue.

“Jack wants me to do the investigation on Lecter.”

“And that’s a bad thing?”

“I don’t know.”

His fingers tap out a rhythm on the side of his stool, “Is it just Jack that wants you to do it?”

“Will requested it.”

“I can see how that might be upsetting,” he gears up, with the air of someone who has put a lot of thought into what they’re about to say.

“Please enlighten me,” she states flatly, “because I honestly don’t understand it.”

“You and Graham always had a thing.”

The look she gives Brian in response to that statement is scorching.

“I know you two were never involved romantically,” he quickly backpedals, “but you were friends. You were probably the closest that he got to having a friend, aside from Lecter, and look how _that_ ended up.”

Beverly eyes him suspiciously, and he holds his hands up in mock surrender, “I’ll be the first to admit that Will and I never got along. I didn’t think that he was stable enough for the job, but I didn’t want something like this to happen in order to be proven right. Will never should have been in the field and we’ve all got a shoulder in the blame of what he did.”

Zeller rubs at an imaginary scratch on the countertop, pointedly not looking at her.

“What do you mean?”

He sighs rubbing a hand over his face, “I was the source that Lounds used for her stupid ‘Takes One to Know One’ piece.”

Bev feels her jaw drop, “Are you serious?”

“I swear I had no idea that she was a reporter,” he exclaims, “she was just some girl that I met at I bar.”

“You talked about a Federal Investigation to a civilian. You set Lounds on Will’s tail.”

Brian winces.

“Christ! Zeller,” she breathes, “half of the reason we’ve got the committee breathing down our necks is because of all the publicity that Lounds shoved on Will.”

“I’m aware of that.”

“Why are you telling me this?” The information is enough to get him fired ten times over, not to mention putting the reputation of the BAU even further down the hole than it is already. Brian is morose, his attitude reminds her of the time when she was ten and her sister accidently put a huge stain on their mother’s wedding dress after she insisted on trying it on. Bev spent four hours dabbing at the white lace with a toothbrush covered in cold water and baking soda so that Amanda wouldn’t get in trouble. To this day, her mother doesn’t know about the dress.

If she has her way no one is going to find out about this blunder either.

“Even though he shouldn’t have been profiling, Graham does have great instincts, the evidence wasn’t always there, but his hunches usually were right.”

She leans back on her chair, “You think he’s right about Lecter?”

“Maybe not.” Zeller admits, “…Probably not, but even if he is wrong, I think that Will is going to be relieved that it’s you who is doing the investigation. You’ve always been in his corner.”

There’s the crux of her original problem, isn’t it? Will is her friend; even if he ends up being found guilty she suspects that she will still think of him as such. It’s hard to reconcile the fact that she feels protective of him in the same way that she does for her sister and Brian with doing this investigation, it seems like a betrayal of that friendship. Not to mention the fact that any evidence she found would probably used against Will at his trial.

But she realizes that Zeller is right. Will is trusting her to do this, and even if nothing turns up, then at least they can both know that she gave it everything that she got.

With that in mind, she cracks her knuckles and re-activates the computer that has gone into sleep-mode in the interim. Brian chuckles to see her determination, and clasps her lightly on the shoulder before she can get carried away with her fact-finding, “Listen. The next time that you see Graham, tell him the truth about what I did, okay? Give him the choice to report me if he wants to. That stuff that Lounds wrote about him having a demented mind, tell him _that_ garbage never came from me …and that I’m sorry.”

“I will.”

As Zeller walks back to his corner of the lab, he understands that this doesn’t mean that she isn’t going to kill him for doing this to her. In fact, she’s probably going to murder both he and Will with her bare hands…and Jimmy is going sit back and drink schnapps while it happens.

It’s the closest that he’s felt to normal in a long time.

For the moment, however, Bev is willing to postpone her wrath in favor of the task at hand. With a few clicks she pulls up the INS database, it’s the best place to start an investigation into Hannibal Lecter.

___________________

Will tries to catch a glimpse of Lydia as he is guided out of his confinement for a therapy session, but the cell next to his is empty as Barney guides him away.

He wonders if she had been relocated while he had been distracted with the Repton file.

The thought saddens him. He wants to ask what happened to her, but he doesn’t want to give Chilton any indication that his little ploy worked. As he mentally debates the pros and cons of asking Barney about it, he is led into an elevator where the guard on his left pushes the button for the lower level.

It seems that whether it’s in the FBI building or in the Baltimore State Asylum, Will is always designated down to the basement. One would think that he’d be used to living without daylight in what amounts to a steel box with stone partitions. Distantly, he thinks that it probably isn’t safe to house the most dangerous people in the asylum near the foundations of the building, where the lines for the water and electricity run.

The elevator doors slide open and he is escorted down a long corridor and into a cavernous room. The room is close to empty except for an apparatus that looks like a cross between a dunking tank and a shark cage. Chilton sits on a folding chair a fair distance away looking smug, and Will supposes that it should make him feel distressed, but the whole thing is so _gauche_ that he has to choke back his laughter at the sight of it.

Two of the guards go through the now familiar procedure of transferring Will from his mobile restraints to more grounded bindings. As they do this, Chilton holds out his hand for the case file that is tucked under Barney’s left arm.

The orderly reluctantly walks forward, “Doctor, are you sure it’s alright to read this file? When Agent Crawford was here he really stressed the importance of keeping it’s contents private.”

The doctor makes a dismissive gesture with his hand, “Well, I can hardly treat Mr. Graham if I don’t know what he is immersing himself in.”

Barney sighs and hands over the documents before he follows the guards out of the room. He throws an encouraging smile at Will on as way out. Will returns the gesture while Chilton is diverted thumbing through the file’s contents.

There is the muted sound of a buzzer going off, followed by the light sound of footsteps, then he and the Doctor are left in silence.

“I’ve been informed that you’re having trouble eating.”

It’s been nearly two days since he remembered what Hannibal had done to him, and he can still feel the ghost of the tube down his throat every time he swallows, “I’m not hungry.”

“All the same, we are responsible for your care here,” Chilton ignores Will’s snort, “and frankly, the lack of food and sleep are beginning to make you look haggard.”

Will glances at the Fredericks’ suit, a mess of black and purple, and thinks to himself that the colors make the man look like a bruise.

Chilton’s glacial expression tells Will that he failed to keep the thought to himself.

Still glaring at Will, he places the file on the ground to the left side of his foot and picks up a small notebook and pen, “This lack of appetite, is it linked to Abigail Hobbs? Have you remembered the anthropophagy?”

Anthropophagy, such a wonderfully analytical word to overlook a gaping horror.

Frederick prattles on.

Will ignores him in favor of his own contemplations. He has the memory, but he isn’t sure just what to do with it. A dozen scenarios enter his mind and are just as quickly discarded. There has to be some way to work this to his advantage. Some way to gain the upper hand in this elaborate game that he’s only just realized he’s been playing.

A chessboard. Black pieces dominate the board, with only a few strategic white pieces left to defend their sad broken king against the onslaught. Off to one side of the board, a pawn lies on it’s side. Abandoned, now that it has served its purpose.

He has a sudden flash of Abigail lying pale and wounded under crisp hospital sheets.

Not a pawn. Always a pawn.

In a distracted sort of manner, Will had associated his recovered memory with Abigail. Just as Chilton had done, Will made a clinical association, more _known_ than felt. Now, like a jigsaw piece snapping into place, the reality hits him with a crippling grief. Grief and fear. Because the detachment, along with the imagery of the black and white chessboard, are so close to Hannibal’s thoughts that it makes the flesh crawl down his back.

The Will Graham of six months ago would have been crushed under a tidal wave of dismay and revulsion.

The pen that Chilton is holding hovers over the paper, eager to make a note of his response, “Mr. Graham, are you listening to me?”

Will blinks heavily, “No.”

Doctor Chilton looks impatient, “I said that Doctor Bloom has requested to see you.”

“I’d prefer not to see her, not now.”

“…And what about Doctor Lecter?”

“What about him?”

“He wants to see you as well.”

The pen that Chilton is holding hovers over the paper, eager to make a note of his response.

_____________________

Six months ago he would have been desperate to avoid such a meeting.

Will is not the man he was six months ago.

Hannibal has seen to that.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Wow. So last night's episode gave me all of the feels. 
> 
> Thanks so much for all the lovely reviews! I know that these chapters are a bit slow but I promise that they are a build-up to awesome events. ;)


	14. Chapter 14

There was shadow in bureau drawers and closets and suitcases,

Shadow under houses and trees and stones,

And shadow at the back of people’s eyes and smiles.

 

Sylvia Plath- _The Bell Jar_

_________________

 

Technically speaking, all of the information that Beverly recovered in her investigation could be conveyed to Jack electronically.

The Bureau has been digital in all of the records, files, and data that it accrues for at least a decade. She is fine with this, Bev’s as at ease in front of a computer screen as she is at collecting evidence, and unlike a lot of agents, she has a strong appreciation for the people in the tech department (a fact that always assures her requests go through the network a little faster than most).

So, imagine her surprise, after finally managing to land a spot in the BAU, when Jack Crawford himself walked into her lab and flatly told her to resubmit her reports in physical format, adding, “While you’re at it Katz, bring the file yourself so we can discuss the particulars.”

Momentarily taken aback, she had answered more bluntly than was strictly polite, “I could do all that on a computer.”

The statement could have been taken as disrespectful, but Jack had only smiled in response, “New doesn’t always mean better.”

Now, with several years of experience under her belt, and a congenital case of bluntness that she no longer attempts to curb, Beverly is forced to admit that Jack was right, there is something about the human element (even in interpreting lab work) that cannot be trumped by an electronic message.  

Printing out documents and findings during an investigation has become a part of her personal ritual. Usually, she finds the procedure soothing: like the sight of a familiar landmark on a well tread path, but not today.

The pages are still warm from the printer when she carries them to Jack’s office. Bev knows she has a billion other things to do; crime doesn’t stop just because Will Graham has been arrested for murder. There is an impressive amount of backlog work (which is stacking up worryingly in Will’s absence), and most of it has fallen right on her doorstep. However, this takes precedence and it has to be dealt with right now.

The door opens and closes with quiet click as she places the report on the lacquered desk.

Jack glares at the plain beige folder for an indeterminate time. Fatigue is evident in his haunted face, his slightly wavering hands, but they’re both grieving and Crawford won’t thank her for mentioning it.

It’s quiet enough that they can hear the seconds tick away on the clock mounted on the wall. Eventually he cracks open the file and heaves a sigh, “We never really expected to find anything.”

“No,” she owns, “I suppose we didn’t.”

“Give me the run down.”

“Forensics sweep is clean,” she says perking up slightly (as science always makes her do), “we ran full panels on all of Doctor Lecter’s clothing. No hits from the list and no evidence of his DNA on any of the victims.”

“What about the background check?”

“That was a bit trickier, his history is a wreck.”

Pulling out his glasses, Crawford flips through the pages of the report, “He mentioned that his parents died when he was young.”

“That’s the least of it,” she comments, “he was born on the Eastern Bloc and the jurisdictional problems alone have been a nightmare to untangle. He’s lucky that his guardians’ records didn’t have so many irregularities in their paperwork, or he never would have gotten citizenship…of course it helps that they’re disgustingly rich.”

Jack gestures to the seat across from his desk, “There were that many gaps?”

Bev declines the offer with a wave of her hand before she continues, “I just got a crash course in Soviet bureaucracy from our contacts in INS and, from what I can tell, record gaps were a pretty standard predicament for the era.”

He shifts a bit in his seat, in spite of the Doctor’s engaging manners and the confidence that he invites, Jack feels distinctly uncomfortable prying into the mans background, “How so?”

“Usually, Soviet citizens would be issued internal passports which were used to monitor employment, places of residence, and control distribution of goods. Unfortunately for us, kids in government-run institutions didn’t receive internal passports, they were registered for a headcount in whatever orphanage they lived in and that’s about it, at least until they aged out of care.”

“So there’s nothing prior to his adoption?”

“I didn’t say that,” Bev chides, “I found his birth record and his father’s internal passport…did you know that Doctor Lecter is the _eighth_ man in his family to be named Hannibal?”

Jack ignores her amusement and mulls over the scant details, “Record of admittance to Soviet orphanage, permission to transfer into custody of a guardian, and an exit visa. Not much to go on.”

She gives a shrug, “It’s all that a legal investigation gets us.”

“What about after his adoption?”

“That was easier to trace,” she says, “you’ve got everything there, from the boarding school he went to in Paris, all the way to his psychiatric practice here in the States. No red flags.”

“Nothing that struck you as odd?”

“A few miscellaneous bits of information, but nothing menacing.”

Closing his eyes, Jack removes his glasses and pinches the bridge of his nose, letting out as strong exhale as he does so, “Thanks Beverly. I know you’ve got better things to do with your time.”

Shifting her weight uneasily, she peers at him closely, “Are you going to give this file to Will?”

“Yes,” he admits brusquely, “it was part of our agreement.”

“I’d like to be the one to give it to him.”

Jack pauses, looking up at her sharply, “Are you sure that’s a good idea?”

There are an alarmingly high number of reasons why going to see Will personally is an extremely bad idea. The obvious danger that Kade Prurnell poses if she should find out that they were still attempting to unofficially consult with Graham while the Bureau officially seeks to distance itself from the man is palpable.

She remembers the desperation in Will’s eyes as she scraped the last moments of Abigail Hobbs’ life from beneath his fingernails. It fuels her resolve and gives her the ability to answer Jack with confidence, “I need to do it.”  

“Then do what you’ve got to do.”

Taking that as a dismissal, she walks out of Jacks office, ready to step into the Lion’s Den.

_________________________

On the surface, there isn’t anything that makes Will’s cell any different from the countless others in the facility. Only after he has spent his days (and nights) pacing his cell, fingertips brushing over mortar and stone, that he finds the memories embedded in the nicks in the paint and dents in the metal.

They tell tales of those who came before him.

Idly, he wonders if that’s what Hannibal is trying to do. Indelibly mark everything that he comes into contact with, a methodical endeavor to mark his passage.

_The image of John Repton flashes before his eyes, panting and terrified as he waits to die. He feels Repton’s skin tear as if it were his own, his bones break as careful hands pull them apart to reach his heart. Blood and air spill into him, out of him. The pain doesn’t stop: it goes on and on._

_His tormentor hovers above him, lingering just out of reach. Hannibal’s lips smiling…always concealing his teeth…it called something to mind … something…_

A loud clang, like the slamming of a door, drags him sluggishly from his thoughts. It worries him that he can’t tell if the noise is happening _in_ his head or outside of it.

“Will?”

It’s Lydia’s voice. The noise that he heard must have been the sound of the guards depositing her back into her cell. He gives a quick sigh of relief, “Did they finally drag you out for a therapy session?”

“I didn’t speak to anyone.”

He gives a mirthless chuckle, “I would say that I’m sorry, but I have a rather low opinion of therapists at the moment.”

“Don’t be sorry,” she tells him, “it gave me time to think.”

“You couldn’t do that here?”

“A change of scenery is always good for thinking,” she says lightly, “I’ve learned quite a bit about myself.”

“Such as?”

“I used to think that I wouldn’t be able to contend with solitude,” her words are drenched in astonishment, “the time I’ve spent here would seem to suggest otherwise. I’ve been so distracted that I’ve only just realized it.”

“Well you haven’t been completely alone,” Will states cautiously, not wanting to upset her, “though I know my company leaves a lot to be desired.”

His words make her laugh brightly, “Actually, I’m very fond of your company, but it was rather scarce the first few weeks you were here. Besides, the solitude I’m talking about isn’t a separation from _everyone_.”

“A particular person then?”

“Very particular.”

He ponders her words curiously, but doesn’t ask whom she is thinking of and Lydia doesn’t offer— perhaps neither of them are quite sure where the boundaries lay in their peculiar friendship, “It’s tempting to believe that you can pin all of your certainties on one person.”

Lydia hums in agreement, “Dependency can be addicting, and for some people it’s as necessary as breathing.”

“Necessary for the dependent or the recipient?”

“The dependent,” she states with grim acceptance, “they don’t need you, but you need them.”

Will remembers the solitude that he had lived in before he met Hannibal, and finds that he can’t deny Lydia’s words. Without realizing it, he had come to rely so much on the man, to need him in ways he cannot bring himself to articulate, “Nature of the beast.”

_________________________

Alana lets her foot tap out a nervous rhythm that echoes on the concrete. It’s the only way she has to relieve some of the tension that locks up her frame as she waits for the orderlies to run through their visitation procedures.

In spite of the familiarity of her surroundings, it is strange to be back. Walking along the corridors had given her half-formed flashes of memories of the various consultations that she’d given over the years and the times that she had visited Will while he was in his fugue state, but it was different now. Will was awake and unwilling to see her.

But apparently he is willing to talk to Beverly Katz.

Even if she hadn’t, in all honesty, been surprised when she had stumbled upon Bev sitting in the waiting room of the asylum, case file resting conspicuously in her hands, Alana’s jaw had still dropped in anger and disgust.

She’s aware that her anger is misplaced to a certain extent. Anger is easier than grief.  

Not once had she mentioned her visits with Will to Hannibal, though obviously he knew about them. She was fairly certain that he was paying his own private visits to Will’s cell in the asylum. The knowledge had preyed on her mind, until finally, at their last dinner together she had confronted him, “Will came out of his catatonia yesterday.”

“So I’ve been told.”

“You’ve been visiting him.”

Hannibal paused the ministrations of his knife and fork to look at her, “As have you. Though, neither of us has seen him conscious yet.”

“You know what he’s accused you of,” she threw her napkin on her plate, “you’ve become a part of his psychosis, how can you risk worsening it? Don’t you care about the harm that you could do to him?”

He took up his wineglass, stirring the contents lightly with a flick of his wrist, “Of course I care, Alana. I want him to leave Chilton’s asylum as much as you do. Which is why confronting Will about his delusions is the best path to take, it prevents him from fostering them any further.”

“Or it could push him over the edge, where none of us could reach him.”

“I know that you’re worried that I’ve lost perspective,” Hannibal lays a hand on her wrist consolingly, “I do not pretend that I have no personal investment in what I do, we both care about him. You understand this.”

Alana pushed herself away from the table, “No I don’t understand it at all.”

Since then, she and Hannibal had mended their fences, but it still gnaws at her. She does understand it- all too well- and she has to wonder if her fevered hopes for Will’s recovery have less to do with what is right for him, and more to do with what she wants. Is she grieving for Will or herself?

She doesn’t know, and Alana _hates_ that.

_________________________

There aren’t any clocks on the cellblock (something he’s almost grateful for- the associations that timepieces now bring to mind make him shudder with disgust), but he can hazard an accurate guess that less than a quarter of an hour has passed since Alana requested to see him.

The buzzer sounds, signaling that it’s safe for his next visitor to walk forward. It unflatteringly reminds him of a circus sideshow. _Wait your turn to meet the freak. Five bucks a pop_.

Beverly’s walk has the same confident stride that it’s always had; however, it’s plain that Bev doesn’t know what to say or how to act around him anymore. In spite of that, her gaze never skirts his; she looks him square in the eyes. His usual aversion to being stared at aside; he’s relieved by the gesture.

Better to be on the receiving end of Bev’s blunt stare than Alana’s wounded side-glances.

Not that he doesn’t appreciate Alana’s efforts on his behalf, nor does he blame her for thinking that he killed Abigail and the others -he had almost believed it himself, but he can see that she has unconsciously labeled him as broken. Her reaction is understandable given the mountain of evidence piled against him. Still, the idea that she thinks he needs _fixing_ needles him.

Even as a small part of his mind whispers that she’s right.

Will shakes off the unpleasant thought and focuses on Beverly instead. It’s clear that she believes he’s guilty of what he’s been accused of, but it’s equally apparent that she is determined to help him. He’s unbelievably grateful for it, even if that determination suggests a certain lack of normalcy on her part.

Then again, Bev has never given the pretense of being normal. She’s far too smart to believe the illusion that anyone who does what they do for a living can be entirely sane. Instead, she drapes her differentness over her skin and fashions it into an armor that she is at home in. She sorts through murder, blood, and horror and she doesn’t flinch. She doesn’t look away.

It’s something that he has always fervently admired about her.

“It's going to take some time to adjust to this," she tells him quietly, eyes dark and honest as she stares at the steel and concrete.

“Well, the room is small and freezing, but at least the company,” he motions towards Lydia’s cell, “is agreeable.”

Bev eyes the neighboring cell and relaxes with a quickly exhaled laugh. She hands over the file- printed on soft paper and conspicuously absent of staples.

Will peruses it with a probing eye; he doesn’t expect to find anything damning. Most of the information is what he expects: the bare bones of a facsimile life. However, one name jumps out at him, “Mischa”.

He’s somewhat shocked to find that evidence of the girl actually exists. He has had good reason to doubt everything that Hannibal had ever told him and more than once he had wondered if the good doctor had made her up in an attempt to ingratiate himself further into Will’s empathy.

“She’s the only real inconsistency that I could find,” Beverly comments.

“How so?”

“You see where the DOD is listed?”

He notes the date on the bottom of the page, “What about it?”

“Look on the next page. The record of death.”

His brow furrows in confusion, “Her death was officially recorded over a year after the date of death.”

“She’s supposed to have died of an illness,” she remarks, “which doesn’t warrant such a long gap in making her death record official.”

“So why the delay?”

“Your guess is as good as mine,” Beverly motions helplessly, “but the most obvious answer is that it’s a clerical error.”

“Let’s say that it isn’t,” Will whispers, feeling a twinge of confidence, the same odd kind of hovering certainty that he felt when he was looking at Garrett Jacob Hobbs’ resignation letter, “what could explain it then?”

“Well,” Bev rocks back on her heels and considers, “usually there’s a postponement in issuing records if the cause of death can’t be determined.”

“The cause of death has been determined here,” he points out.

“Yes,” she hums, “and bacteriophage strep is easy to identify. A visual examination is usually enough to distinguish in it’s advanced stages. There’s no way it would take a year to diagnose even with the reduced testing procedures they had back in the day.”

“What does that suggest?”

“That...” she muses for a few moments before the answer hits her with a small ripple of shock, “they couldn’t find a body.”

Will nods and comments with as much nonchalance as he can muster, “Which raises quite a few interesting questions, doesn’t it?”

“That it does,” she agrees quietly, “but it _doesn’t_ make him guilty of anything.”

“No it doesn’t,” he admits, “have you talked to him? I mean in more than just than a passing conversation?”

“I conducted his interview during the investigation.”

“How did he strike you?”

“He’s…” she sighs as she concedes the point, “he’s _odd,_ but that doesn’t mean anything either. You’re odd, and so am I for that matter. The field tends to attract people who are a little off the beaten path.”

“You know what other personality type it appeals to?”

“Psychopaths,” she states flatly, “and that reasoning might be a little more compelling if you weren’t currently incarcerated in an asylum.”

He blinks and then gives a dry chuckle, “Actually, I think it makes my argument more persuasive.”

Beverly gives him an exasperated look, but doesn’t disagree. In fact, she looks rather contemplative as she observes him.

Will takes this as tentative encouragement, “What does your gut tell you?”

She tilts her head shrewdly, “What if it’s telling me that you’re wrong?”

Hoping that he isn’t driving off the last of his allies, he charges on in a last ditch effort, “Then I’ll leave it at that, I’ve had plenty of reasons to distrust my instincts over the past few months, but I’ve never distrusted yours.”

It’s a blatant stab at emotional compulsion and Bev sees it for what it is immediately, “You can be a real jackass sometimes, Will.”

“Yeah,” he mutters shamefacedly, “I’m fully aware of that. I’m sorry.”

“Good,” she says calmly, “so don’t try it on me next time.”

“Next time?”

She brushes aside her upset at him with practiced ease. Bev’s made her point and she’s not the type to beat a dead horse, “You’re right, there’s something hinky about Lecter.”

Will sags with relief, the breath that he didn’t realize he had been holding, escapes in an audible wheeze, “Thank you.”

“Would you really have given up if I hadn’t believed you?” she asks almost teasingly now.

“No,” he confesses, “still, it’s nice to be believed.”

“For all the good it does us,” Bev comments, “maybe there are other avenues to explore, but frankly I don’t know where to look. I’ve dug as far as I can go.”

“For now.”

Beverly crosses her arms in confusion for a quick moment before the implication dawns on her, “Don’t tell me that you’re thinking about _talking_ to him.”

“You said it yourself,” he reminds her, “we need to know what direction to look in.”

“If he’s everything that you say he is, then you know that he’s going to try and draw you back in,” she spits out, “to set your mind on fire again.”

“I know.”

Concern is written in Beverly’s every tensed muscle, carved into the lines of her face as she walks out of the hospital. There’s no use in trying to get him to reconsider. She knows that with the same acuity that tells her the raised hairs on the back of her neck will never stop tingling, not until they get Lecter locked in a box.

Until then, she’ll keep her secrets safe.

_________________________

He sits quietly on the hard mattress staring at the folded plastic chair that leans across the corridor; the seat looks painfully uncomfortable and he wonders if it’s Chilton’s blatant way of discouraging visitors from crowding up his halls. Not that they should need any discouragement, and yet Will has somehow gotten more visitors in the asylum than he ever had in Wolf Trap.

There’s enough irony in _that_ to make him scream.

The file that Beverly left behind is sitting perched between his open palms. He should feel elated; he’s just been handed a weapon. Instead, all he feels is a weakness in his knees and a trembling in his hands, a nervous swirl of anxiety and guilt dance in his thoughts.

“Are you afraid?”

Will searches for words as he forces his eyes on the sheets. The details go on and on, relentlessly, but he doesn’t really perceive them. Why couldn’t he savor this moment? Why the strange detachment and jumpiness?

Somewhere in the dark parts of his imagination a voice is whispering with glee, “ _See_?”

“Yes,” he whispers, unsure if he’s speaking to Lydia or himself.

“For your friend or for yourself?”

“I’ve got plenty of reasons to be afraid for her.”

“It seems like it,” she hums in acknowledgement, “I have to say, you certainly inspire rather unique loyalties among your acquaintance. They’re willing to risk their lives or the lives of others for you. ”

“Law enforcement requires you to be able to take a life in the line of duty,” he tells her quietly, trying not to think of the ten bullets it took to take Garrett Jacob Hobbs down, “that doesn’t have anything to do with me.”

“I wasn’t talking about…Beverly, was it?”

“Who were you talking about?”

“The other one,” she reminds him, “…the one whom I assume is the reason you’re incarcerated.”

“What about him?”

“It’s the same man, isn’t it?” she comments bemusedly. “The one who read to you while you were in your fugue?”

“He isn’t my friend.”

“You sure about that?” she queries. “The man killed a large number of people and framed you for those killings – I imagine that he risked exposing himself in the process. Then to top it all off, he comes and practically nurses you when you’re in here. I may not be an expert but it sounds like he wants something from you.”

The file slips to his lap as his fingers stiffen in surprise, “He wants me to _like_ him.”

“He’s practically pulling on your pigtails,” she is positively gleeful, “like a school boy with a crush.” Will isn’t sure if he should be amused by the comparison or horrified by its implication.

After some time Lydia asks, “You never answered the other part of my question. Are you afraid for yourself?”

“Why should I be?” Still feeling somewhat stunned, he pinches the bridge of his nose and stalks the small space between his cot and the sink, trying to expel some of the nervous energy that courses through him, “Do you think he’s going to try something while I’m locked up in here with a million eyes on me?”

“I think you’re smart enough to know that anyone can get gotten under the right circumstances,” she responds dryly, “but that’s not what’s scaring you.”

“Isn’t it?”

“No,” she retorts, “you just sent your friend out like a chess piece and everybody knows that winning the game requires a few sacrifices. The real question is: are you terrified about what that kind of callousness will do to you or of who it makes you resemble?”

Scrubbing his palms over his increasingly unkempt visage he gives a tired shudder, “Both.”

“I thought so.”

It rankles him that she’s surmised so much about him when he knows so little about her, “What makes you such an expert?”

“Observation, educated guesswork,” he can hear the shrug in her reply, “and a certain amount of experience.”

“Is that why you’re here?” Will presses gently, “That person you were so dependent on? They felt the need to broaden your experience?”

“People are fond of going on about how love wounds us,” she picks her words, careful to both answer and avoid his question, “they rarely bother to mention that it makes us become both the wound _and_ the knife… empathy in its purist form.”

“No,” he broods in the darkness of his cell, “in it’s ugliest.”

“You ought to know,” she concedes.

_________________________

Dishes have been pleasingly positioned upon the long table. The darkly lacquered wood gleams in stark contrast to the ivory colored plates, which shine in the dim light of the fireplace, setting off the color of the food. String music gently floats from an indeterminate place. The presentation is elegant with just the right amount of restraint to prevent it from falling into gaucherie.

Overall perfection.

As Frederick Chilton stares sulkily at the dishes before him, he silently wishes that Doctor Lecter would accidentally knock over a wine glass or drop a plate onto the pristine floor. Distantly, he hopes that the salad that has been so meticulously prepared for him would end up tasting terrible.

Of course none of that happens. Lecter navigates the meal like he’s taking the lead in a dance. The wine glasses stay upright; the dinnerware remains firmly where it should be, and the leafy greens that Frederick bites into are sumptuous.

Hannibal’s finesse doesn’t seem to know any limits. Chilton tries to imagine the man as a tired and overworked med student, elbow deep in blood and flesh, and falls utterly short.

When Frederick thinks back to his own time in medical school, all he can remember was a surfeit of exhaustion and a growing frustration as he watched his peers surpass him in areas where he struggled to grasp the even the most basic of skills. Tracking into the surgical field had only increased his mounting anxiety as his hands shook and his incisions faltered.

He’d managed to stick it out through his residency until he was presented with his first live surgery when he had stared at the red and throbbing body on the table and knew that he would never be able to cut into it. The operating supervisor had to take over the procedure while Chilton hyperventilated in the next room.

To this day, he could remember the look on his fathers face as he told him of his failure. The disappointment had been painful, but the accompanying _resignation_ , as if he had always suspected that his son would fail him, had been unbearable. Frederick couldn’t prevent himself from venomously asking what happens when working twice as hard isn’t enough to get you out of the starting gate.

He never got an answer to that question. Regardless, he wasn’t about to waste the near decade of medical training he’d earned.

His former colleagues may have sniggered behind his back, but his experience gave him a leg up on his new associates as he exchanged sutures and scalpels for operant conditioning and reverse-transference. Delving into the world of criminal psychology, always aiming for the highest and most prestigious standings, he tried to ignore the narrow-eyed glare of skepticism his father consistently cast in his direction, and his own anxious need for acceptance.

In some respects, he found that being overlooked helped him to see more than he would have otherwise. People underestimated him, forgetting that he had undertaken a difficult and dangerous job for years and had transformed the Baltimore State Hospital into a goldmine of psychological research. In short, they forget that given the right situation, he could be formidable.

The fire snaps as an underscore to his thoughts. He privately wonders if the fire was a means to foster camaraderie. The setting certainly feels _intimate_ , it would be so easy to gain confidences.

“You’re quite silent Frederick,” Hannibal smoothly observes, “I hope that the meal is to your satisfaction.”

“Of course,” he assures, “I was reflecting on our mutual patient.”

“Will was never my patient.”

“Nevertheless,” Frederick coughed against the gloating tone in his voice, “he _is_ mine, now.”

Hannibal smiles, but it holds no warmth despite his amiable manner. Amiability can function as an effective disguise for absolute coldness, and Chilton can feel that chill stronger than he can feel the heat of the flames at his back.

For the duration of a breath Frederick weighs his options, he’s curious about Hannibal’s sudden remoteness, the man had never been anything less than genial. The good Doctor’s affability hasn’t waned; however, it has become rigid and almost a trifle masklike, leaving Chilton speculating if the pretense has always been in place.

Intellectually, he knows that it could mean any number of things.

Nonetheless, what immediately comes to mind is how ingenious his colleague has always been in his enquiries into Abel Gideon’s unconventional therapy. So soothing, but oh-so-curious. Perhaps Doctor Lecter has been waxing unorthodox with his own patient.

Reverse-transference?

It would certainly account for Graham’s fixation.

“How has Will responded to my request to see him?”

The question gives Frederick a little thrill when he hears it. Lecter has finally shown his hand and he is willing to play when tactics and reason demand it.

Chilton tilts his head, trying to see Will Graham like Hannibal does- or rather, trying to see what the other man sees in him. It was obvious that Lecter was using Will, but how would it benefit the Hannibal? How far was the man snared in the emotional and psychological entanglements of his manipulation?

He might be able to twist the situation to his own advantage.

“Will thinks it would be a good idea, and so do I,” Chilton sits back in his chair feeling confident in his victory, “you are, after all, the object of his fixation.”

For the first time all night Lecter’s smile reached his eyes, and for just a moment Frederick thought that it made the man appear almost wolfish.

_________________

The darkness was one of the first things he noticed upon waking in his cell. Buried underground- _buried alive_ \- there wasn’t a hint of light that wasn’t artificial. Even in the middle of the day the corridors were swathed in gloom. At night it felt like a tomb- all cold and black and enclosed by stone.

Before his arrest, he had tried to banish certain thoughts from his mind at night. The darkness could only lend itself to them. He hadn’t been very successful in his efforts but there had been a certain comfort in knowing that daylight would eventually come and make things slightly more bearable.

Now he didn’t even have that.

“Do you miss him or has the hate completely erased such feelings?”

When Lydia whispers the question into the pitch-black his mind has no defenses as it careens along the destructive paths of dependence, dependency, and increasingly violent ways to kill the person he once thought of as a friend. He immediately knows the answer.

It’s decidedly unfair; he has only known Hannibal Lecter for a handful of months. Will figures that he’s spent a third of that time in varying degrees of unconsciousness, and the man still managed to change absolutely everything — to remake Will’s entire universe.

Of course he hates Hannibal.

Of course he misses him.

“Of course.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Holy Shiznit, I'm back! I'm sorry for having my own mini-heateus but unfortunately my lovely beta's laptop died several months back and I wasn't confident enough to post any more chapters without someone to correct my terrible grammar. Luckily my beta has a car now and we can see each other with a little more frequency. 
> 
> I absolutely promise that the next chapter will be posted a little before the airing of Season 3 (Woo! It's finally here!) 
> 
> So, notes for this chapter: I really hope that I got Alana, Bev, and Chilton in character. My biggest worry was Chilton. Book!Chilton is a total douchecanoe however Show!Chilton is...well, he's still a douche but he's not quite as bad as his literary counterpart. 
> 
> Also, we'll get a hannigram reunion next chapter.


	15. Chapter 15

O, my enemy,

Do I terrify?

Sylvia Plath – _Lady Lazarus_

_________________

Not everything had been moved from the house, only those trappings which the various branches of law enforcement had found pertinent. It left the impression of a place hastily deserted, its life suddenly gone elsewhere. It gave Hannibal a quiet sort of melancholy to roam about the empty rooms- a pleasure he allowed himself to experience more than once.

He decided to walk up the adjoining staircase and into Will’s bedroom. Struck at how much larger a room appeared without it’s affects- not just a little larger, but near to double the old size. Without furniture or accouterments some of its personality was stripped. Ghosts are often tied up in tangible objects: in the decor that one was observing when someone said certain words, in the inlaid wood pattern that one had stared at a certain harmful juncture at one’s life.

Outside the bedroom, the same fields stretched out, grass rustling with a frigid winter wind. Looking about himself, Hannibal could exult in the bare boards and open rooms. He always became animated at new beginnings, and that was what empty rooms symbolized to him.

However, a new beginning didn’t mean that the past was gone. From somewhere deep within his memory palace he heard music- vanished music from other rooms, other times. Such was his mood that night that he does not question it, but stands and listens. It has a sad beauty all it’s own.

Hannibal knows with the utmost certainty that it is the intangible that leaves its most indelible stains.

Will inhabits a place in his life, Mischa too. Each of them occupying places so different, in their own times, that it had seemed surrounded by different bricks, and even their windows gave out on distinctive views. The common thread lays in their absence.

The former waits behind a long line of locks: collared, imprisoned, temporary property of Doctor Chilton.

Mischa has quite simply … _flown_. Leaving only open doors and a trail of aubergine to mark her passage in his memory place.

Without them Hannibal feels dislocated, like a planet knocked off its orbit. That absence is sudden and glaringly noticeable, a thousand little things that should have been done but weren’t, a cutting remark that wasn’t made, a sudden unexpected loneliness whenever he had savored a glass of wine.

For several long nights he had pondered that feeling of loss. Staring at the empty chair that still resonated with the vibrations of the dozens of conversations whispered between Will and himself- from the first moment he when he had admitted to the heady pleasure of taking a life. To the last moment when the younger man had _seen_ him and the gaze had torn a rippling hot shudder down Hannibal’s spine that left him almost shaken in its wake.

So achingly beautiful, so lovely and broken, that Hannibal had been willing to risk everything to allow Will to reach his full potential. So that, in turn, Will could truly understand Hannibal, as no one had since Mischa.

Even as he mourned the loss of Will’s innocence, for there was something fragile in him that Hannibal wanted desperately to protect, he had understood the necessity behind his actions.

It was on this uncertain grounding that he had ventured back to the asylum and, staring into Will’s empty eyes, Hannibal had seen a reflection of himself, as he must have once been. Younger, with his mind a dark, shrieking place full of torn, bleeding shades that ceaselessly wander, hungry and dangerous.

This is the visage that the soldiers had seen when they’d pulled him from the deep freeze that had claimed his sister’s life. Perhaps Hannibal should have felt vulnerable in the face of this echo of everything he’s ever lost.

But he does not.

What he saw was a beginning. Hannibal had reforged himself from the fragmented and dissonant pieces of his past.

Here in this barren house he sees a chance for the various portions to gather themselves up, shard-by-shard to form the mechanism of his being.

The teacup reformed with new conception, new purpose.

The world is recreating itself.

Will can do the same.

_________________

The early morning hours leave Beverly glaring down the barrel of her gun with unfocused eyes and gritted teeth. Very determinedly _not_ thinking about Newton’s Cradles or how to refine the recoil fallout from a weaver stance.

One brief moment of quiet pervades before the sound of firing breaks through the disharmony of her memories. She keeps a mute tally of each shot as she squeezes the trigger, picturing the spring mechanism hammering the metal firing pin into the back end of the bullet. Imagining the ignition charge in the primer and propellant, forcing it down the barrel.

When she reaches the count of seventeen, the silence retrenches itself on the firing range. Bev removes her headset, the ringing in her ears is unnaturally loud in the empty room.

A soft shuffle echoes to her right, and she looks quickly over at the bench where the shadows cast by the overhead lamps are disrupted and lengthened by a rising form. Beverly brings the gun to eye level, an automatic response to a potential threat, though she’s quick to remember that she’s unlikely to find trouble at the Bureau’s shooting range.

"Are you gonna shoot me?" Zeller asks, putting his hands up in surrender when he sees the gun. His face is almost comical, a sincere look of confusion, unsure whether the correct course of action would be to run screaming from the room or to offer her his heartfelt apologies for her blatantly obvious vile mood (he is fully aware that he has helped to contribute to her list of exponentially growing worries).

"I'm not going to put a bullet in you," she mutters, lowering the gun. "I am, however, considering putting several into the Copycat Killer.”

"I take it,” Brian leans comfortably against the bank of the sidewall, “that you don’t mean Will Graham."

“You take it right.”

“How can I help?”

"Seriously?" Bev asks doubtfully as she pulls the safety into position on her gun, “You been sniping at each other for months, I’ve had to listen to your bitching about intuitive leaps for longer than that, and now you’re just going to believe him when he says that he didn’t do it?”

“No,” he corrects himself hastily; “I’m not inclined to believe Will anymore than I was inclined to believe his jumps from theory to fact, but I trust you. I trust _your_ gut. If your instincts are telling you to question the evidence we have… then we go out and get some more of it.”

Brian’s words mirror the ones that she heard yesterday, though the sentiment behind them is different, leaving her both touched and exasperated. Not for the first time, she finds herself asking when she had become an emotional touchstone to the unwashed and unstable masses of the FBI.

Contrary to popular belief, she had not yet ascended to a higher plane of anything, and was therefore not privy to the secrets of the universe. Blithely, she hopes she will never walk into the morgue one day to have Jimmy start crying onto her lab coat.

Beverly shakes her head once to rid herself of the image, “No, we can’t."

“There’s always more evidence to find,” Zeller contradicts confidently, “it’s just a matter of getting your hands on it.”

“That’s the problem,” she retorts, “I know that it’s there, but we legally aren’t allowed to do more than what I’ve already done. And with Purnell breathing down our necks, everything has to be done by the book.”

“Ah,” Brian stares at the target riddled with holes, “that would explain your sudden impulsive need to pump something full of lead in the wee small hours.”

"Something like that,” Beverly admits. “What are you doing here so early?"

"Cataloguing," Zeller jerks his head in the direction of lab, “I was getting ready to leave when I saw your car in the parking lot. Since you weren’t in the lab, I figured that this would be the next best place to look for you."

“To offer your help?”

“Yeah.”

She stares at Brian for a long moment, thinking about consequences: unintended and unforeseen. Once Jack knew the truth, how would he react to the knowledge that members of his team were conducting an unauthorized investigation behind his back? What about those higher up on the bureaucratic food chain? If anyone were to be punished, who would take the brunt of the fallout?

Then there was Lecter himself. If the man were even half of what Will is accusing him to be then he was not a man to be trifled with, not a man that should be underestimated.

It’s enough to send her into alternating fits of anxiety and recklessness. Though, Zeller’s presence has curbed the latter somewhat. It’s impossible for her to be completely rash when she has to look out for someone else.

Still, there is something very comforting about not being completely alone in this.

“Thank you,” Bev whispers, the words feeling inadequate as they leave her mouth, “it doesn’t change the fact that there isn’t anything that we can do but…it helps.”

“Maybe we need to look at the problem from a different angle.”

“Is that your understated way of telling me,” she manages a small smile, “that my bull-in-a-china-shop tactics are not conducive to an investigation?”

“Yep,” Brian agrees companionably, “or at least not a subtle one.”

Bev rolls her eyes as she leans across the box to recall the target to her station, shaking her hand out lightly to dispel the tension that locks up her wrist. “Because you are the undoubted king of subtlety.”

“Sometimes I can even manage tact.”

“I’ll believe it when I see it.”

“Let’s use some rational thought now,” he focuses on the advancing board, admiring Beverly’s marksmanship, “like good little scientists.”

She takes a deep breath, “Okay.”

“Further evidence may possibly exist,” Brian postulates, “but we don’t know where to look for it or how to make it admissible if we were to find it.”

“Actually,” Bev admits hesitantly, “Will may be able to point us in a direction. In a day or so.”

Zeller blinks cautiously, “How?”

Purposefully ignoring the sudden itch in her trigger finger, she narrows her eyes and forces her voice to be steady, “He and Lecter are going to resume their sessions.”

His eyes widen in surprise, “ _What?_ ”

“I know.”

“Our entire division is being put under the microscope,” he struggles to choke back his astonishment, stumbling on his words, “in what way is it possible for Jack to let two people under investigation for the same crime to collaborate like that?”

“Apparently through a lot of legal double-speak,” Beverly shrugs, “Hannibal was never technically his therapist and he can’t be compelled to abscond from Will by the ethics laws. However, since Lecter was paid by the Bureau to have _discussions_ with him, Doctor Chilton thinks it would beneficial to use him as a consultant. Because neither Hannibal or Will has been found guilty of any crime yet…”

“There’s nothing to prevent them from speaking to each other,” Brian finishes, reluctantly impressed at how deftly Doctor Lecter has managed to toe the murky lines of the ethical dilemma.

“Exactly.”

“That still doesn’t explain why Jack is making it so easy for this to happen,” he mutters as he sticks his hands in his jacket pockets, “it’s not like him to not put up a fight.”

“No, it isn’t.”

That gives him pause, he turns to look at her but her eyes are everywhere else. She’s shifting from foot to foot as she does when she’s angry about something, “What am I missing.”

“This thing with Will has really shaken Jack,” she huffs, tilting her head left and right, “he doesn’t completely trust his own judgment anymore. I think he’s worried that if he was wrong about Will then he could be wrong about Hannibal.”

Bev finally meets his gaze, as he suddenly understands, “He’s using them to investigate each other.”

“Clever isn’t it?”

“And Will is using us to investigate Lecter?”

“Yep.”

“We…are so screwed.”

“Pretty much.”

The room fills with noise: the targeting mechanism spins and whirs as it resets itself, the air conditioning clanks back into life, the overhead lights continue to drone with their regular buzz. Outside, too, there is a stirring as people slowly trickle into the building to tread through another day.

“You can still back out if you want to,” Beverly informs him and there isn’t a trace of judgment or criticism in her words, only a little tiredness. He hasn’t felt this uncertain since he found out about Freddie’s article. The memory tugs at him, teasing at the back of his mind, as he carefully prods at it.

“Maybe we need to take a page from their playbook.”

“How?”

“Delegation,”

“It’s a big risk for someone to take,” she frowns, “especially for an investigation that is little more than conjecture right now.

“I think I know someone who would be willing,” he says, and is pleased with how collected he sounds. The calm is only skin-deep and there is an ever-growing list compiling in the back of his head of all the ways that this could go terribly wrong but he forces himself to perfect indifference.

“You’re not thinking of asking Jimmy?” Bev questions confusedly, “Not that I think he wouldn’t help if we asked him but his hands are tied as much as ours, there would be no point to it.”

“No,” Zeller quickly backtracks, “I wasn’t thinking of Jimmy or anyone else in the Bureau for that matter.”

“Who were you thinking of?”

“Before I tell you,” he reaches out to trace the grooves on her gun handle with his fingers, observing the faint striations it has and what sections have become worn through years of handling, “I think you should holster your weapon."

Beverly gives him with the same wry grin that she wears as she wades through the bodies of the people on their morgue slabs, all steely resolve and manic obsession, “Why?”

“Because you’re really going to hate it.”

_________________

"Are you sure you’re ready for this?" Lydia asks.

Her voice is as jarring as a touch on Will's shoulder, and as his eyes begin to adjust to the low light that he had closed his eyes against he notes that she sounds worried and wide awake, as if she has been lying there waiting for this to happen. The same way that he has been waiting.

“No,” he responds with what he hopes is a reassuring smile before he remembers that she can’t see it, “but I suppose that doesn’t matter now. He’ll be here any minute whether I want him to or not.”

“What _do_ you want?”

His lips twist as he glances nervously into the corridor, "It doesn’t matter. When I want something it tends to get in the way other of things: my ability to think straight for one. My ability to cope for another... he’s brought this down on me all at once and I can’t do anything but move through it.”

“Have you always been this good at avoiding questions you don’t want to answer?”

“I’m learning,” his fingers press into his palms and for a moment he imagines he can feel crescent shaped scars indented into the flesh (when he peers at them they’re smooth).

“Fast enough to keep pace with him?”

“Probably not.”

“Now you’re being honest,” she chides.

He laughs, soft and low. It comes so naturally that it feels strange. He doesn't recall having many reasons to laugh in recent months. When he stretches his memory the last time he can remember feeling any genuine mirth is- _in a dark hotel room with Hannibal over that first meal_ -accompanied by sting of nausea; a dizzying spike of hunger close on it’s heels.

"Do something for me?" Will asks, blurts, suddenly and fiercely grateful for this small gift she has given him.

“Of course.”

“When he gets here – don’t look at him.” There’s no way to convey how important this is and his back is tight and flushed against the wall as if he can press his meaning through it, “Don’t talk to him and especially don’t talk to me.”

“If that’s what you _want_.”

“Believe me, you don’t want Hannibal Lecter inside your head.”

This time she is the one to laugh.

_________________

When Hannibal finally appears the moment doesn’t feel quite real.

Still, he walks down the cellblock with the same quiet glide, as unflappable and inscrutable as he has always been.

Will’s finds himself remembering.

_The Hobbs’ kitchen. The smell and taste of his own bile when he found Abigail’s ear in his kitchen sink. The impact of the bullet that tore through his shoulder._

Oddly enough, he remembers the kindness too.

_How grateful he was to find Hannibal alive after Tobias Budge attacked him. The consideration and respect that grew between them. Most of all he remembers the warm weight of knowing that he could trust someone else when he couldn’t trust himself._

He wants to crawl into the protection of those memories of blissful ignorance.

The words – _how_ _could you?_ – are trapped somewhere between his brain and his lips. Just for a moment he isn’t sure if he’s accusing Hannibal or himself.

A strange envy crawls up Will’s spine, the mere sight of Hannibal should make him angry enough to drive every other feeling away. Instead, he’s awash in self-directed anger for not recognizing the truth earlier.

"I can hear you thinking, Will."

“Hearing me think and knowing my thoughts are two different things entirely,” Will observes as they stand on either side of thick steel bars, separated by a few scant feet and an ocean of mistrust, if he concentrates he can almost feel the waves of it lapping around his ankles.

"Sometimes," Hannibal admits, it doesn't take him long to assess the situation, “but perhaps in this instance I might infer that you are thinking of the cases you have resumed consulting on.”

There’s a thread of conceit in the observation.

“No,” Will refutes, partly to deflate some of that insufferable complacency but mostly because lying would be ineffective. Hannibal spins lies, he’s as used to them as a spider is to its webs, Will knows that the truth is the only weapon he has to cut them away.

“Enlighten me then.”

“I was thinking that things between us will be the same again,” his voice cracks and his eyes burn just as he wishes them to. But the shake through his frame and the panic in his throat, those aren’t supposed to be there. He doesn't know what to do or how to stop it, so he doesn’t try.

“I know.”

He looks up and finds himself being watched curiously and carefully, almost sadly. There’s a sense that Hannibal is almost out of his depth – unused to the situation.

"I wasn’t sure you'd come."

“You’re my friend, Will.”

“Such a comfort,” he snarls out. The brief flash of rage extinguishes itself almost as quickly as he gives voice to it.

“A comfort you could have had sooner.”

Will feels his mouth twitch. His decision to talk to Jack and Beverly first must have needled the other man. It seems that Will isn’t the only one feeling envious today. He wonders if there’s a chance that Hannibal is not infallible, that he may possess some of the same sentimentality that can be played upon.

"One I can do without," he says.

Hannibal’s eyes bottom out, dark but not dark, there's a swirl of amber in them. He imagines that it’s the only part of the man’s appearance that doesn’t disguise itself – red and black like blood spilled under the moonlight – eyes that all the worst monsters should possess.

He leans forward to whisper, “Are you still harboring delusions about me then?”

Their postures mirror each other, with voices lowered and bodies dangerously close to being in arms’ reach. Will wonders what they look like. They must appear intimate, like lovers.

"I see you very clearly."

“I know that you think you do."

"Then that’s something we have in common."

With a tilt of the head, Hannibal shift’s his gaze towards the corner of the cell, where Will has organized the plain folders into two neat stacks, “I’m concerned about you conferring with the Bureau on more cases.”

“Believe me,” he says with distain, “I am well aware of just how deep your _concern_ runs.”

"Your skepticism is undeserved, Will.” Hannibal’s tone is pointed, “Who you let into your head is of the utmost importance to me."

He chuckles, "Who I let in or who I keep out?"

“Anything that could potentially affect your recovery.”

“So there are _some_ killers that I should try to wrap my head around?”

There’s no subtlety to Will’s inferences. He's the wild card. He's volatile and for the first time in a long time he doesn’t have to hide his strangeness from anyone. Even if he’s lost everything else, there’s a certain liberty he’s gained in that.

“I’m saying that everything familiar has been removed from your life and that the structure of certain carefully chosen cases may give you a sense of normalcy.” The older man smiles with usual obsequious expression. He has appearances to maintain, after all. Will wonders how much a clever mind like Doctor’s must have resented that façade of servility at times.

“How would I determine which cases to pursue?” He reaches forward and wraps his fingers around the bars, each movement fluid as he licks his lips and studies the psychiatrist. Dimly he hears Barney stir at the guard station but the orderly chooses not to act.

Hannibal doesn't back away, “Naturally, I would assist you with that. Since it was my failure to help you that resulted in your incarceration. I would never abandon you to wander alone in your wilderness.”

A perfect performance, he briefly considers applauding as the Doctor presents a picture of grief and humble regret.

Sighing, Will retrieves the folder that contained the Repton file. It’s not as if anything it contains could actually shock the man – and if he’s being honest he’s slightly curious how Hannibal will try to dissuade him from investigating the case. He’s conscious that there is only one killer that his psychiatrist wants him to engage with.

Just to be safe, he grasps the file from its edges, so that there’s no chance of coming into physical contact with Hannibal. If the older man notices his reluctance, he doesn’t mention it as he plucks the file from Will’s grasp and deftly peruses it.

“Your recommendation, Doctor?”

“I think you should proceed.”

“You do?” he questions in a gasped out breath; the sound is loud in the quiet of the hall. He barely manages to keep the words flat. Hannibal’s obvious endorsement of his continued investigation into the Chesapeake Ripper alarms him, badly.

“With the proper psychiatric supervision.”

“Why?”

At a frantic pace, Will mentally goes over the details of the Repton case. Had he missed something? Was this not the work of the Ripper? Lecter had never copied a Ripper kill before. No – it had to be the Ripper – the crime scene had the same energy, the same theatricality…but Hannibal would never want another killer in Will’s head.

“Because I don’t want you to be alone.”

Just like that, the pieces click together, it’s so simple that he’s almost embarrassed, “You don’t want anything in my head that isn’t you.”

“You’ll never be without me,” Hannibal says a genuine smile stretching across his face, a small glimmer of canines, before he adopts the appropriate expression of solemnity, “in the meantime, I hope you’ll seriously consider resuming therapy.”

Whatever Will was going to say is swallowed up in the sound of the electronic door at the head of the corridor going off. In a few moments Barney appears, keys jingling with his stride, “Excuse me, Doctor Lecter. The half-hour that Doctor Chilton allotted for your visitation has passed.”

The psychiatrist responds to the politeness of the orderly with a pleasant acquiescence, but the two men only take a few steps away from the cell before Hannibal pauses and turns back, “I forgot to return your file.”

Numbly, Will reaches out to take it. The two men stand with a hand on each end of the folder, gazes locked.

"I'm going to take my time, you know," Hannibal’s voice is soft, in a sudden movement he slides his finger over the younger man’s thumb. Will makes a strangled sound and leaps back as if he has been burned.

Barney says something, but the words are lost on the both of them.

"Although I recognize the need for urgency," Hannibal murmurs, "I'm well suited to this kind of pursuit. More than most."

"This isn't a game," Will protests, weakly.

Hannibal’s face ripples in pleasure, "Oh, but it is.”

The moment finally becomes real.

_________________

"I was frozen. Like…" he trails off. He both trusts and distrusts Lydia. It's mostly the former because she struggles with trusting herself and he understands that better than most. For some unknowable reason, he feels like she is the only one he can tell and not just because she’s in the cell next to his own.

In return, the girl is quiet, but interested. Will can feel the sharp graze of her scrutiny through the concrete and brick.

"Like you're losing a part of yourself," she says finally.

“I feel powerless," he confesses.

"You’re not powerless," Lydia murmurs with a sudden ferocity, "you're afraid. You’re _allowed_ to be scared and uncertain. Don’t let him convince you otherwise."

His vision blurs. "I don't want to be," he admits, "I've done nothing but be afraid for so long that I don't know how to do anything else. I’m hurt. I'm angry. I'm sad. I'm worried about Beverly, Alana, and Jack. I don't know who I am sometimes.”

“It’s alright to feel longing too.”

Then he's crying, but even that is not what he expects. He’s shaking but his hands are steady. It feels like he’s burning, somehow; something inside of him twists and grows and he wants desperately for someone to understand this thing in him that's threatening to burst through his skin.

"He'll come to you again," she says, “he won’t be able to resist no matter what his better judgment tells him.”

“Yes.”

“What will you do?”

That is the question, isn’t it? It's a tangled mess in his head, these past few months he’s been stumbling along the edges of his life like a man trapped in the dark, all he needs is the means to turn on the light.

Before Will can reconsider his actions, he calls out for Barney. It doesn’t take long for the orderly to approach.

“I want to talk to Doctor Chilton.”

_________________

Maybe it was a bad idea to spring this idea on Beverly so suddenly. Perhaps it was also a bad idea to neglect to mention to Freddie that Beverly would be present at this little meeting, but in all honesty, Brian had no other ideas on how to get both women in the same room. Even if the tension between the two is thick enough to choke him, he’s privately relieved to have focus thrown off of his indiscretion with the journalist.

Still, he’s glad that he made Bev leave her gun in the car.

Because he should have known when Freddie showed up, that she would be every bit as arrogant as she always was (undercover stints as a barfly aside) in the presence of law enforcement, with that insufferable expression of condescension.

Quickly, he stands between Katz and the doorway of the reporter’s motel room, Zeller doesn’t have much faith that could stop Bev from retrieving her weapon, but he figures that it’s worth the token gesture. More than likely, he’d get a punch to the jaw and a withering glare for his troubles. If he’s particularly unlucky he’ll get a snide, mocking comment from Freddie into the bargain.

"You said you had some information for me Agent Zeller?"

“It’s not information so much as a line of inquiry.”

“How disappointing. I was hoping to hear about your _relations_ with Will Graham,” Freddie sneers, looking not at Brian but Bev, whose eyes narrow and cheeks go crimson at the less than subtle innuendo.

"Actually, it’s Graham that we want to talk to you about," Zeller’s voice rose in volume trying to ward Beverly off from whatever retort she had on hand. He gave her a very firm look to remind her that they needed Lounds’ cooperation. If someone walked away with a black eye, there would be no salvaging this meeting.

“Oh really?” Freddie unceremoniously but smoothly slips back onto her bed with an almost-bored expression on her face, “I assume that the presence of Agent Katz means that you want me to find proof of Will Graham’s innocence.”

“What makes you say that?”

“I can’t imagine your friend here,” she gives a contemptuous (and fully reciprocated) glare at his companion, “lowering her pride enough to ask for my help unless she was desperate.”

“It _is_ about Graham.”

“He’s insane,” Freddie reminds him authoritatively, “and you said it yourself.”

Brian lets out a deep breath, “I did.”

“Have you changed your mind?”

“To be honest,” Zeller states quietly, “I haven’t decided.”

“He cannibalized Abigail Hobbs,” there’s a stab of anger in Freddie’s words that Brian is astonished to hear. It’s surprisingly human of the reporter and rather bad news for them. If she’s got a grudge against Will for the girl’s death, she may not want to hear any other possibility.

“Actually it was only a part of Abigail,” Bev speaks up for the first time since she entered the room.

“Your point being?”

“My point is,” the pathologist is suddenly struck with a thought, a mirror of the same question that Will had asked earlier, “where’s her body? We had canine units all over Graham’s property in Wolf Trap and the Hobbs house in Minnesota. Why didn’t we find the rest of her?”

“Psychopaths are rather adept at hiding evidence and bodies.”

“Will was sick,” Beverly countered, “with a _confirmed_ brain disease. Are you really telling me that someone who left an ear lying around in his sink was clever enough to dispose of the rest of the body so meticulously?”

Lounds looked guarded, but interested, at the reasoning, “That would suggest that Will Graham had an accomplice.”

“Possibly,” Brian shrugs, “but isn’t it worth checking out?”

“Hmm…” she dithers, “and just whom would I be investigating?”

The two agents dart a glance at each other.

So far the Bureau has kept a lid on Will’s accusations, nobody wants allegations thrown at yet another consultant when public opinion already stands on such shaky ground. Though they had talked it over between themselves, agreeing on their course of action, the move has a ring of finality to it.

There will be nothing to protect them if anything goes wrong.

Beverly gives him a solemn nod to proceed.

“Have you ever met Hannibal Lecter?”

Freddie looks pleased at the suggestion, almost smug. Which is enough to make Zeller pause in wonder, even as another part of him is admiring the lively spark in the reporter's eye, quickly – he shoves the traitorous thought away.

“I have.”

“You’ve spent a lot of time interviewing psychopaths,” he comments, “so I won’t insult you by telling you who’s a serial killer and who isn’t, but what does your _experience_ tell you about Doctor Lecter?”

“Do you want me to investigate him?” Lounds whispers, all bloodied curls, wide eyes, and fake guilelessness over steel ambition.

It’s the best camouflage ever conceived, and if it weren’t for the fact that she’s scared - for Will, not for herself, and doesn’t this just say something - Beverly would be laughing herself sick. Is this really all it takes to get classified information?

“Now is not the time for posturing Freddie,” she interrupts, “the only real questions are: Can you do any better than us?”

An eye-roll is the only response that the reporter deigns to give to that question.

“ _Also..._ ,” this time Bev smiles derisively, “can you do it without getting caught?”

"The day that I get caught in the middle of an investigation is the day I deserve to bleed."

_________________

Consent forms have been signed and preparatory drugs taken by the time Barney wheels Will into the infirmary.

His world has become a blur of soft edges, for the life of him he can’t remember leaving his his cell but given the amount of restraints that he’s locked in, perhaps it’s for the best. Only Barney and Chilton are present, which gives Will some pause, perhaps Frederick wants haggling rights over Will’s first professional analysis.

The orderly is filling syringes and swabbing his skin in preparation for the procedure. There is a worrying amount of medication on the surgical tray, but Barney’s hands are sure and steady. When the man looks up he gives Will a supportive nod, “Everything’s ready, Doctor.”

Chilton waves the orderly on without looking up from his clipboard; he is still working on cultivating the confident demeanor and easy indifference that Hannibal displays so effortlessly. Will supposes that now isn’t the time to remark on how ineffective his attempts appear. Instead, he leans back obediently and congratulates himself when he doesn’t flinch at the needle’s sting.

“It’s very important that you voice everything that you experience,” Frederick reminds him as the drugs slowly crawl along the tubes and enters his bloodstream.

The dim light coming in through the slats of the ceiling light bleaches them all a sickly shade of green and illuminates Chilton’s face in uneven, horizontal strips. It's been a few short months since Abel Gideon opened him up like dissected frog, and the damage is recognizable in the man’s stiff posture.

As Will’s heart races and his pupils dilate, he falls back on his investigative training, predicting where the scars are and what was taken. It isn't difficult; Frederick’s body tells the story of its abuse quite loudly – the pained and heavy slump that he’s constantly combating.

Though, he knows that he makes a less than attractive picture himself.

Will’s skin is waxy, what little muscle mass he has is deteriorating due to poor diet and his prolonged hospitalization. His hair has become overgrown and lank. For all intents and purposes, he’s beginning to look like a corpse.

“Tell me what you see, ” Chilton says.

He lowers his eyelids and shivers.

_It looks like Lecter’s home, only expanded. The ceilings are higher, the corridors are vast, and the colors are so rich that none but Hannibal could bring them to life. As Will walks past the dining room, the blooms of the herb garden pulse and grow, as dense as a jungle, down into the woodwork._

_The stainless steel of the kitchen glints like quicksilver and the smell of cardamom and blood wafts throughout the room. Will’s movements are stilted in a dream-like way, but he can count the ingredients on the counter separated in slices and pieces._

_A memory and not a memory._

_He stands Doctor Lecter’s kitchen, watching the smooth and gliding movements that look more like a dance performance than food preparation. The man glances up at him pointedly before he wordlessly passes Will a knife: a piece from the expensive looking cutlery that he normally keeps polished in a glass cupboard, but he took it out for Graham._

_Will backs up defensively, “I can’t.”_

_“You underestimate yourself,” Hannibal replies._

_A little more uncertainly, “I don’t know how.”_

_On the counter, the meat begins to throb, “Would you like to learn?”_

_Hannibal radiates pleasure as he stands beside him, placing his hands over Will’s own. As he guides the younger man’s movements, his flesh renders and crisps._

_Panic riots like a trapped bird beneath Will’s ribs, but it does nothing to deter his companion. Blood bubbles forth from those beating organ; they thrum in pace with his racing heart. Hannibal seasons them with the dried cardamom, salt, and pepper._

_Vines creep in from the dining room, hungry for the dripping sustenance._

_The creature – Hannibal – places the meat in a roasting pan fat side up. Just for a moment, the meat on the rack screams._

_Not an animal, animals can’t scream like that, and they certainly can’t plead._

When making aioli and the importance lies in the whipping of the ingredients together by hand until emulsified instead of using a blender to pull it all together.

_Unperturbed, the man – the monster – collects saffron blooms from the gorged plants and makes a garland of them, “Presentation is as important to a meal as the food itself.”_

Drain off most the drippings from the roasting pan and then place on the stovetop. Heat over medium-high heat. Add the sliced onions to the drippings and cook, stirring often, until soft. Add the garlic and cook for another minute. Deglaze the pan with the sherry and scrape all the brown bits up off the bottom of the pan with a wooden spoon.

_Fingernails lengthen into thick black talons._

Slice the rested meat very, very thinly.

_Now the air of the room is calm and filled with expectation, the music that surrounds them hits a deep-searching chord._

Place the egg yolks in a medium measuring cup. Add the garlic and lemon juice. Whisk together with a fork. Then, slowly pour the oil on top of the yolk mixture. The oil should separate from the other ingredients.

_A crown of antlers sprouts from his forehead._

Spread the aioli generously on one half of a split roll. Dip the sliced beef into the au jus and then place on the rolls. Top with cheese and other half of the roll and place on a baking sheet.

_Hannibal treads into the dining room, silent as a snake, quick as cat, unfurled like a shadow in afternoon sun. He has the saffron in one hand; the other is clasped firmly around Will’s shoulder that hemorrhages from the places where razor-sharp nails have broken the skin._

Heat.

_All he can see at first are the handprints burned over her collarbones, glowing bruises blooming on her throat and neck, covering the scar. It’s several moments before he recognizes the figure stretched out on the table as Abigail. Her eyes are the same, blue and deep, but her skin is as pale and lifeless as marble. Hannibal leans down to tuck the crown of flowers into her hair,_

_Her ear is missing._

Serve immediately.

_He coughs, choking on something deep in his throat that should not be there; his stomach churns and twists at the feel of it. He wants to curl into himself and never be found out, he wants to take a running leap onto glinting tracks and stay there until he joins the rest of the ghosts that have fallen to the siren lure of the rails._

_The other senses this, and fixes his maroon gaze on Graham; they match the liquid that spills to the marbled floor, twin pools of crimson. The older man slips Will’s heart out of his chest and holds it reverently in its clawed hands._

_Will stands stricken, fascinated at the sight of it, “Are you going to eat it?”_

_“Darling boy,” Hannibal’s lashes are thick and dark as raven feathers as they brush against Will’s cheek. “I already have.”_

Slowly he begins to drift back towards consciousness. Even though he wasn't enjoying the nightmare, he’s no longer entirely certain he wants to wake up, either. Will opens his mouth to try to ask where he is, but nothing comes out. His chest aches with a bruised feeling and his head is heavy. Both of his arms feel trapped, leaden.

The roiling emotions of the hallucination make him feel sick. As he starts to gain lucidity, pieces of his dream begin to scatter and fly, but the knowledge that Will has gained from it remains firmly rooted in his mind. Try as he might to obliterate the image of Abigail’s face void of life, of Hannibal’s teeth embedded in his heart, of blood sweet as honey on his tongue.

No, he can’t forget it. It lives in him – a quiet sense of knowledge.

With a deep breath he screws up his face, squeezing his eyes tightly shut in preparation for whatever awaits him on the other side of his lids. Wishing for just another second, just another moment…

"Mr. Graham?"

Reluctantly, he opens his eyes.

He knows that face. It's not who Will had hoped for, but its familiar, trusted… A name is slow in coming forth from the fog of his memory, “Barney.”

Chilton, who is standing next to him, leans over to look more closely at him. Will keeps blinking, trying to clear his vision. Everything is so indistinct. All around him is white, clean, sterile – the asylum. Barney should look more reassuring but instead he furtively looks over his shoulder at the doctor.

“You just gave us a recipe for dip.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hi all! Here's the long-awaited (at least for me) Hannigram reunion. I hope you guys enjoy it and forgive me for the blatant appropriation of lines and key scenes from SOTL- I found that I couldn't help myself as I was writing it.
> 
> Unfortunately my beta is in the middle of an overtime crunch at work so it will probably be a few weeks before I can get her to look at another chapter but the good news is that we have a whole new season to tide us over. Wasn't the premiere amazing? 
> 
> Only four days to go till we get our official Hannigram reunion!

**Author's Note:**

> Feel free to drop by my tumblr and chat: thewomanofscandal.tumblr.com


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